Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #529: Rep. Justin Amash, Amy Holmes

Episode Date: May 9, 2020

Bill’s guests are Rep. Justin Amash, Amy Holmes, and Dan Savage. (Originally aired 5/8/20) 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 Maher. Hey, everybody. Hey, and another fantastic audience. Oh, you look like we're still hung over from Cinco de Mayo this week, or as we call it here in Hollywood

Cultural Appropriation Day. Yeah, Trump loves that holiday. He retweeted that famous picture of him, you know, with the Taco Bowl at his desk. He, remember this? Yeah. It was either that or learn a second. thing about Mexico.

And Trump supporters, they love Cinco de Mayo. They celebrated this year by putting salt on the rim of their disinfectant. It was a... If you really want to get high, you got to eat the worm at the bottom of the Windex bottle. That's how you really...

Look, I love that holiday. Always have lived out here for a long time. I partied by myself. I did. I was in the kitchen. I made toki. Takis tacos. And guacamole. And marquamole. I wrecked the whole place. I was like, you know what, I'm going to leave this for the cleaning lady.

Then I remembered, I'm the cleaning lady. Yeah, this week I tell you, folks, I am officially tired of winning. I mean, this nightmare just, it does not stop. I mean, the virus did not go away in April, magically, like it was supposed to. The numbers, they say, are going to get worse. And yet we have to open up. I mean, everything's going bankrupt. The gold's gym went bankrupt.

week, Hertz is going to go bankrupt. Cheesemakers say they're down 50%. Disney profits down 91%. Jay Crewe, of course that's understandable when half the country is desperate and unemployed. You don't want to walk around looking like a yuppie.

And in the midst of all this, like the last thing we need, did you see this? We're getting an invasion of Asian murder hornets. That's what they're calling it in the press because they never try to scare people. Asian murder hornets.

Trump said, impossible. I banned their flights in January. This man, I mean, amid the assessment from his own White House, that the numbers of dead are going to go up, he says, first he said he was going to wind down the coronavirus task force, winding down, you know, like, nailed it.

But then he's, you know, it's like, well, we got to get on to the pivot, you know, the pivot from the cluster fucking the response to shitting the bed on the reopening. And look, if anybody ever says to you, American exceptionalism, just nod your head because we are exceptional.

Exceptional fuck-ups. Hong Kong has a dense city, no local transmissions for two weeks. We can't make a box of Jimmy Dean Pure Pork sausage without infecting half of South Dakota. And then Trump

this week decides he's going to get out of the house. Goes to Arizona to visit a mask factory. Doesn't wear a mask. Trump refuses to wear a mask because he is a manly man. He's not going to wear a mask like some girl. And also it smears his makeup. That's the other.

And then the piesta resistance, he goes to the Lincoln Memorial to have a town hall sitting there in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln because they have so much in common like depressed wives. And he was interviewed. by the Fox News host. Very safe. They blew the smoke up his ass from six feet away. And I guess predictably

complained that he has been treated worse than Lincoln was. Who was shot in the head? But apparently it's not as bad as having Joe Scarborough up your ass. But, you know, we can only hope that help

is on the way. Joe Biden was talking this week. I thought this was a great idea he had about his vice president. He said he is considering a Republican. Yes, let's get this country united together. He says he wants maybe a Republican and, of course, a woman. And Lindsey Graham said, done and done. All right, we've got a great show tonight.

We have Amy Holmes, Dan Savage, and Congressman Justin Amash, who I talked to earlier. Let's get right to it. Okay, my first guest is the Libertarian Congressman representing Michigan's third district. He's currently running for the Libertarian nomination for president, please welcome in your homes, Justin Amos. Justin, how you doing?

Hey, Bill. How's it going? Well, you know, I'm still in my friggin' man cave. But, you know, I'm hopeful that I'll get out soon. But look, you're an interesting guy the last couple of weeks running for president. My liberal friends know you as the principled Republican. We found one because you were the one who stood up during impeachment and said, Yeah, Trump did commit crimes. But now, anti-Trumpers of all stripes are a little nervous

because you want to run against Trump as a libertarian, and they worry, I think, that you will be taking votes from Biden and that you could be the Ralph Nader of 2020. How do you see it? Well, I'm in it to win the race, and I'm not trying to take votes from one side or the other. I'm here to take votes from both sides, frankly, and also reach out to millions of Americans

who aren't represented. In the last election in 2016, 45% of Americans didn't even vote. So there's a big pool of people out there, and I'm going to reach out to all of them. And I'm presenting a very different vision for the country, too. I'm a libertarian. I believe in limited government. I believe government is overreaching in so many ways. And it's violating our rights when it does this.

The fact that we don't have a representative government is a violation of our rights. Congress doesn't even work at it. doesn't even work anymore. You have a few leaders who get together and they negotiate with Steve Mnuchin or someone else in the administration and they tell us, here's the deal and vote yes or no. And people are sick of that. And I think that's leading to a lot of the polarization out there. Okay. Well, I mean, third party candidates, you always have your story and it's always similar and it's always nuts because, you know, third party candidates never win in this country. But okay, If you're not worried about tipping the election.

You need the right kind of candidate. You need a candidate who can go and get the message out to the people and is approachable and presentable. I think a lot of times when you have third-party candidates come in, they are coming from left field a little bit. And it's good to have a candidate out there who can present the message in a way that most people find approachable. And if you spend time with me over the course of this campaign,

I think you're going to find that I'm the normal guy, the regular guy, and these other two guys are the buffoons. Okay, we'll move on. But libertarianism, I've been called that. There are some parts of it I'm down with, always have been. But it seems like, first of all, libertarianism in general seems like, you know,

a basic cable channel that kind of lost its good rep. It still has a place on the dial, you know, you get on the ballot. but I think people think it went too far into crazy land with there shouldn't be traffic lights and stuff like that and especially now with the crisis we're having I must say I feel like now it's a little out of step libertarianism I think what people really what people want is effective government

traffic light thing I mean there aren't libertarians calling for no traffic lights let's be clear about that okay and I know people have these caricatures of libertarians We want a government that works and we want to represent the people and have people's rights protected. I think that's the core of libertarianism. It's protecting people's rights. It's about individual liberty. And we've seen what this government gives us.

It's not protecting people's rights and it's certainly not helping the little guy. I mean, this coronavirus relief package, how has that been helpful to anyone? You had the government spend $3 trillion and they still couldn't help the people who need the most help. They help bankers. They helped people on Wall Street. Yeah, if the stock market goes up, it'll be because they helped the rich, not because they helped regular people.

And libertarianism would say, let's help people who need the help. Let's not help the people who are connected and feel entitled to it. So you'd give the same $3 trillion, but you'd get it to the people? Because giving away $3 trillion from the government in any situation

doesn't sound like any kind of libertarianism I've ever heard of. Well, it's, you know, it is a controversial position. I don't think it's a position that's held by all libertarians, but the fact is we live in a political world. You have Republicans and Democrats controlling Congress, and money is going to be spent on a relief package. There's no doubt about it.

So the question is, then, how are you going to do it? I don't think you need to spend $3 trillion or anywhere close to that. You could give money to the people directly and it would be way less than what we're talking about in terms of spending. But there are other things we can do, too. Get government out of the way. Get the government out of the way of preventing people from adapting. There are regulations in place that prevent people at home from adapting to the current crisis.

You have state governments getting in front of people telling them they can't go to work when you might be able to make reasonable accommodations depending on the circumstances. Not every place is New York City. So we have to be rational, practical, reasonable, and actually libertarianism is all those things. Well, I would agree with some of that. Like the governor of South Dakota a couple of weeks ago said the people themselves are primarily

responsible for their safety. That's such a South Dakota thing, such a bedrock conservative thing, the people themselves. Three states different. But I mean, as far as the... You can't compare South Dakota to New York City. So it's reasonable to say,

hey, one state is going to be different from another or counties within a state. I mean, I live in Michigan. If you look at West Michigan counties versus the east side of the state coast or Detroit, there's a big difference in terms of how the cases are arising. So to have a one-size-fits-all approach, that's crazy. Libertarianism says, let people on the ground,

let people at home make more decisions, because that's actually the way you get knowledge, and it's actually the way you make better decisions. Okay, maybe I misled you by saying she was the governor of South Dakota. Forget South Dakota. I didn't mean New York versus South Dakota. And I wasn't criticizing this. I kind of feel this way.

I think the government, the big criticism, conservatives have always had in general, is that people over the decades in this country get too dependent on government. I think government definitely has a big role, but you can get too dependent, and I think at this point,

we're at a place where we're out of bullets. We stayed home for two months, but now the numbers are going up. It looks like it's going to get worse again, because some people did say that. We've just delayed it. We can't really stay home forever. We're crashing the economy.

Yes, people have to understand that it is primarily your responsibility to stay healthy. The government should, of course, help the vulnerable people. I would be more for a situation where instead of we're all staying home, I'd rather work, pay taxes, and then vote for whatever it costs to keep the vulnerable people protected. You agree with that? What's a more reasonable approach? I mean, we need to let people get back to work where it's appropriate to do so. People can make those decisions, though.

You don't always have to have government coming in and telling people they can't work or this situation is the same as that situation. We had the governor of Michigan treating every business as though it's the same and actually causing a lot of problems. If you tell every business that they can only have a certain percentage of their square footage filled with customers, well, you end up with lines out the door where customers are then standing next to each other and spreading the virus. So it's actually counterproductive. And I want to leave businesses to make those decisions. I don't want the government telling people to decide that stuff. We'll get better outcomes and we'll keep the economy in a better place. And then we'll have more resources to pay for those who are most vulnerable.

What's the libertarian position on, or yours at least, on health care in general? I assume we're not for Obamacare. But hasn't this crisis shown us that, I mean, look what's going on in the hospitals. they didn't get the business, the normal business they got. So now, in an effort to save them by not overloading them, some of them are going broke and they're furlowing people. I mean, it's so crazy how this country can just screw up everything. And doesn't it say that this profit-driven system, this pay-for-service system,

it just can't work. Hospitals work like airlines. They never want an empty seat on the airline, and they never want an empty bed. They're on this margin. I'd say that it's the government doesn't work. I mean, government is the way. telling hospitals to shut their doors and the hospitals could make these decisions on a case-by-case basis depending on the circumstances. I don't think it's right to say that every community in the

country is the same and to suggest that the virus spreads the same in every single community in the country is just not true. We know that not to be true. I mean, okay. There are other countries in the world that have different cases of viruses and deal with them in different ways. It's just not true that it spreads in the same in every community. Some communities have a bigger problem than others. We have to let people make those decisions, and hospitals have to make those decisions. You keep arguing with me about the thing I'm agreeing with you on.

I get it. It's not the same in every place in November. Okay, completely different questions. I'm asking you, which is what is the, you know, when the virus ebbs and we get back to normal, hopefully thank God one day, what is the libertarian health care plan? It's not Obamacare.

Is it what we used to have, which was going... It's not what we used to have. It's always been really regulated, at least in recent decades. I think you need to remove a lot of the regulations when it comes to what people can provide, what insurers can provide. I mean, it's gotten bogged down where insurance becomes... All the services become sorts of commodities, and they're no longer normal services like you might expect to get. you can have some kind of backstop, but the backstop should be as close to home as possible.

It definitely shouldn't be at the federal level. If states want to have backstops, they can make those decisions. As a libertarian, I want people to make as many decisions for their own lives as possible and get the government out. But as a person running for federal office for the presidency, I can at least say, let's get the federal government out of some of this stuff and leave it to state governments and communities can make decisions. And if some states want to get together and form some kind of coalition and say, hey, you can use our services and you can use their services, then that's okay, too. The states can decide that stuff.

I don't know why it's got to be centralized by the federal government. Give people more choices. That will lower prices. Get the government out of all the regulations. And then if a state wants to have a backstop for people, I think that's appropriate. But it shouldn't be at the federal level. Well, you may have left the Republican Party. but you took that answer with you.

They're going to like that one in the old club. Okay. So let me ask you this question. We have less beds per 1,000 people in our hospitals than what's that? Libya, Mongolia, and Turkmenistan. We also are more like a third world country in, you know, certain measures like child birth deaths,

stuff like that. We handled this like a developing nation. because we are a developing nation. Doesn't that give you pause to... I mean, I don't agree with that. We have standards well above the rest of the world, and you can always pick some obscure, you know, item and say, well, we're not doing it as well.

But there are lots of reasons for things like not having enough hospital beds. There are a certificate of need issues at the state level. There are a lot of licensing issues and other things that really get in the way of having the right number of beds, or at least preventing people from adapting quickly. Also, we're a diverse country.

We welcome people from around the world, maybe not under the Trump administration, but historically we've been a very welcoming country. My dad is a refugee, my mom is an immigrant, and people come here from around the world, and they bring some of their situations from back home, too. They don't always come here with the same standard of living that someone born here has. And we accept them and welcome them, and over many generations, you see more assimilation and eventually you don't even know that their ancestors were from somewhere else. But we've been welcoming, and that also means that sometimes some of our statistics don't match up.

And we take the hardest cases in the world. If you look at a hospital, it's the American medical system that is taking the hardest cases from around the world. People come here for medical care, and sometimes that means that because we're taking the toughest cases, you have people who don't do as well in certain circumstances, because we're the one's taking the challenging situations. Okay, last question. Conservatives, Tea Party people, libertarians, they all talk a big game about we should get the budget balance,

but when it comes to cutting defense, that's where they wilt. I want to see where you are on this issue, because our defense, to me, the most bloated, a lot of it is straight up socialism. You know, even the Pentagon will say, we don't need these tanks, don't make them. We have no place to put them,

and people still make them because they are jobs. programs, right? That's right. And these are not the, I mean, we're building. They're sometimes building weapons we don't need. We have bases overseas that are empty. And we fight wars without any authorizations. I mean, they'll claim an authorization from 2001 or 2002 to fight some war that's

totally unrelated. And the American people half the time don't even know about it. So, yeah, we have to bring down our military spending. We can bring it down in a way that is reasonable and appropriate. And we'd still spend way more than the. the rest of the world. I mean, if you look at the spending, the military spending, we're spending as much as, I don't know, five, six, seven countries combined, and most of those are allies. So we can bring this down and defend ourselves, and we need to have a foreign policy that is

based in trust of the people and representation of the people. We can't have a foreign policy where we just do things behind people's backs and they don't even know what's going on. Okay. I'm glad we ended on one way we agree on again. Great to see you. Thank you for doing this. Good luck. Thanks so much, Bill. Good luck with the campaign, and we'll see out in the real world. Take care.

Thank you, Congress. All right, she's a columnist for the Swiss weekly magazine, Die Welt Volka. Amy Holmes, did I say that right? De Welt Volka? Excellent pronunciation. What does that mean? I mean World Week in German. Oh, World Week.

Okay. So what a week the world had, huh? So, Amy, I'm just going to straight out ask you, what's your ruler of the world, or at least America, what's your plan for this? Because this week I found very depressing. We thought we were like flattening the curve and we'd stayed home and maybe we fixed it. And then even the White House itself said, no, it looks like there's going to be more deaths by the end of the month. And we already, you know, stayed home for two months. we can't keep having an economy and not working.

Where are you on this? What's the plan? Well, I think one of the great advantages is that we don't have a rule of the world with a one-size-fits-all plan that we're looking at different countries, different states to try to learn lessons on moving forward for different demographics, different geographics. We can't have this lockdown last much longer. It is getting dire.

There is a story just today in The New York Post. that we now have a pressure being put on food banks by grad students who can't afford their rent, can't afford groceries. The impact on the American people, the American economy, 33 million jobless claims, now a new report coming out that over half of small businesses

expect to go out of business in the next six months that we start getting into the territory, that the cure is worse than the disease. I don't know if you read this story this week. about, I didn't realize this, in 1968 and 69, we had the Hong Kong flu, and somebody named Jeffrey Tucker wrote an article and said, well, it was funny, he said they let Woodstock go on. And it was a very bad flu. If you extrapolate the numbers, given the population of the country at the time was only 200 million, and we were way less obese, it could have killed like 250,000 people back then. But they handled it very differently. There was no closings.

The stock market didn't crash. Schools were open. You can go to a restaurant. Woodstock, like I said, the view was, yes, let the people who are not vulnerable to it. Of course, there's always going to be some who will die of anything. Let them leave their lives and protect the vulnerable and leave it as a medical problem.

It was not something they thought back then, I think on either side of the aisle was appropriate for the government to get involved in. I mean, we've changed a lot. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think it's so interesting. And looking at the Hong Kong flu and, you know, the public response to it, I think people were more stoic. And remember, these are families who had parents, parents who had parents that had gone through World War II.

People had, you know, suffered or our country had suffered on a grand scale when it came to conflict. So something like the Hong Kong flu, I think people were able to take a bit more in stride where they contrast to that to other disasters that they or their parents had seen in their lifetime. I also think a big thing is they didn't have 24-7 cable news pumping out all of these frightening headlines about COVID-19 or in that case, you know, Hong Kong flu. So a lot of things go into this. Something that's been really frustrating to me is that we have so many political reporters reporting on what is a health story. So everything gets shoved through this political lens, shoved through partisan fighting and bickering and, you know, all of that. When I want

to get information on, am I at risk? What can I do to minimize my risk? I don't want to have a deathly illness. Even if, you know, I'm in the demographic that'll get through it, I want to learn ways to be able to minimize that. But instead, we get a lot of political headlines instead of really useful information. Yeah, I mean, I think government definitely has a role. I just, they're just not efficient at doing it now. I mean, obviously, there are governments around the world who got involved and really quashed this thing.

So, you know, I don't know if that's what would have happened back in 1968 if the government got more involved. But I want to quote something from Tom Friedman for you. He said this week, we've let ourselves go as a country. We've let ourselves be dumb as we want to be for so many years, devaluing science and reading, turning politics into entertainment, adopting horrible eating habits. And I thought that resonated with me. I feel like our response to this has, like you say, be terrified. Call yourself a hero for staying home watching TV for two months.

And never does, if I had one complaint with how they've handled it, the Foucher, and those people is we've been home for two months. They could have asked us at the very beginning. The most important thing you could do, they could have said, is get yourself in better shape. You could change your health profile a lot in two months. We could be in a much better position, and it's just like when George Bush, after 9-11, said,

go shopping. You remember that? Go shopping. And this was like, keep eating. And, you know, I know people hate to hear that message, And I hate to say it, but it's the truth. The core of this problem in this country, one reason, obviously besides the Trumpian nonsense, is that we as a country, you look at the numbers from other countries around the world,

not nearly the amount of deaths because they don't have the same obesity profile. Well, and in fact, a report, a study just came out of the UK that they found that obesity was a hugely, no pun intended, contributing factor to COVID-19 deaths. And weirdly enough, Bill, I've actually lost weight during the shut-in because I've been subsisting on scrambled eggs and oatmeal. I think I might try to patent this new diet. So, you know, weight-wise, it's actually been a benefit for me. But yes, you're right.

And one of the reasons I think that we, you know, should emphasize more taking care of our bodies, you know, in terms of protecting our health, is because that's something that we can do, that we can, you know, have some control over. Now, look, I know better than anybody else that gaining weight is a lot easier than losing it, but that's something that if you know know why, what are the risks if you are overweight, that you can take the solutions in your own hands and make a change yourself. I can't change whether or not I sit next to somebody on the subway who has COVID-19, unless I don't get on the subway in the first place.

But I can change what's in my refrigerator. Yeah, I think that's a great message because, you know, when you talk about this issue, it's very easy for other people to score cheap points by, you know, attacking the messenger. When the truth is they're just enabling people, I think, by, you know, basically we got to this place where we're proud of gluttony. I don't know if you saw Adele this week. I want to read some of these tweets, but Adele lost a lot of weight.

It was all over the press. And there's a controversy about this. This is not controversial. This is purely a good thing. Listen, and by the way, the Old Adel would not fare as well with COVID-19. I mean, we applaud health care workers when they save other people's lives. We should applaud, I think, someone when they make a move to save their own life. Listen to this.

This is the mentality of this country. One tweet, like, did we again push another sane person in the spotlight to an eating disorder? Is she okay? I'm concerned. Okay, the eating disorder is eating too much. This is insane that they think the eating disorder goes in the other direction. Telling someone that weight makes them less beautiful in any way is disgusting. No one's saying it makes you less beautiful.

That's in the eye of the beholder, but science is science. You can't change the facts. It makes you less healthy. Well, and we know that and that it can drive heart disease, asthma, all sorts of other. problems associated with obesity. This is part of why our former first lady, Michelle Obama, made tackling child obesity her key number one first lady issue, if you remember, and her planting an organic garden at the White House.

She was trying to get ahead of this because, again, it's a lot easier to gain weight than it is to lose it. And it's a lot easier to have good eating habits starting when you're a kid and when you're trying to develop them as an adult. You know, when it comes to Adele, I'll be honest, I haven't followed the great Adele weight saga the last few years. Stranger's weights, I don't get emotionally invested in it, but we should get emotionally invested in ourselves and if our bodies are serving us. And something else that, you know, now scientists are looking at in the case of COVID-19 is that fat cells have a property

in them themselves, just the bat cell that helps the COVID virus proliferate and attack your body. So it's not just having the extra weight on your frame that's making it hard for your heart to work or for your lungs to work. The fat itself could be contributing to the virus making you sick. Yes, it's the worst thing for your immune system. And it'd be great if someone who struggles with this instead of, you know, again, attacking the messenger said, yes, there are a lot of excuses. I mean, it is harder in this country to eat good food. the way we subsidize the wrong things, unless you have money, it is a lot harder.

But it's not impossible. Like you said, you know, how about we're the can-do country? You know, you never have to have soda. How about that? Whatever you're eating, that doesn't have to. I might not like that, but it's a lot better for us. But I think Bill... So who are you going to vote for?

I have no idea. I haven't really thought about it. And in fact, we're not even... Do we know Joe Biden is going to be the nominee? He's still presumptive. Anything can happen. So we'll see in November. Yes, Joe Biden's the nominee.

Who are you going to vote for? Sorry? Yes, Biden's the nominee. Who are you going to vote for? Honestly, I don't know. Really? You can't decide between the guy who says drink bleach and Joe Biden? Well, I think you are interviewing a guest, Justin Amash, who is planning to run for office,

is joining the ticket. So, you know, let's look at all of the potential. of competitors and we'll see by then. But I don't have a strong idea about it. Okay. All right. Thank you. And good to see you.

We'll see you in the real world soon. Greetings from Gotham. Okay. Okay, well, this is our sixth show, believe it or not, from my backyard and Man Cave. And I just wanted you to know that we're aware it's not been exactly like what you expect, but we have tried very hard to preserve the soul of the world. the show and I want to give kudos to my staff for pulling that off as best we can and a big thank you to the audience for sticking with us under these very difficult times. You know, in times of crisis,

there's a lot of fear and that leads people to a lot of groupthink and we have tried to present different ideas during this time. Many you might not agree with, and I don't agree with all of them, but it's important that we keep doing that. So I thank you for sticking with us. And I thought that was a perfect segue, by the way, to get into one of our favorite bits that we've done for years now. I don't know it for a fact.

I just know it's true. So here for you now. I don't know it for a fact. I just know it's true. Coronavirus edition. I don't know it for a fact that quarantine self-haircuts are better than what you'd get at Fantastic Sam's.

I just know it's true. true. I don't know it for a fact that people are going to fuck their first Tinder match after quarantine. I just know it's true. I don't know it for a fact that employees at Sears have no idea there's been a lockdown.

I just know it's true. I don't know it for a fact that the Kardashians are deciding which sister to sacrifice to the virus to stay relevant. That's very mean. I'm just kidding. I don't know for a fact that Dr. Burke's cries in her car.

I just know it's true. I don't know for a fact that Melania tells Trump, not tonight, I might be asymptomatic. Asymptomatic? Something like that. I don't know it for a fact that Lou Dobbs drinks his hot dog water. Not really related to the crisis, but sort of. I don't know it for a fact that you've been through so many categories on Pornhub.

You're thinking of clicking on the one where the chicks are giants. See, I've heard about it. that one. I don't know it for a fact that somewhere a Jewish mother is complaining to her son. You never call. You never Zoom. I just know that one's true. I don't know for a fact that your wife thinks about Gavin Newsom during sex. That's true. And I don't know for a fact that Bush would have fucked this up too. Not as bad. But he would have. Okay. Okay, he's the columnist for Savage Love and host of the Savage Lovecast podcast, Dan Savage. Hey, Bill. How are you? Great. And you're in Seattle?

Yeah, I'm up in Seattle in my office. Of course, it doesn't matter. We're all locked away. We're starting to come out again. But I want to ask you about your column because I'm just very curious what people are writing right now. you must have a lot of people who have changed the subject to, excuse me, to, you know, what do I do in this crisis? How do I hook up? I'm alone. Whatever it is. What is like the number one query you're getting? The number one seems to be permission slips. People want to carve out an exception that applies just for them to sneak out of the house, to leave the people there quarantining with and go fuck somebody. And sometimes it's go fuck somebody in addition to the person at home that they've been sleeping with. And that's just, you know, too risky.

I've had some readers get angry with me because, you know, I'm a gay guy and I'm in my 50s and at the height of the age epidemic in the 80s. I took risks for love and sex and intimacy and connection. But, you know, back then, if you went out and took a calculated risk and had anal sex with somebody, you didn't go home that night and have anal sex with your mother. So you didn't put anybody else that you were living with at risk. It was a risk that was all yours. And in this case, with sex, if you're close enough to someone to have sex with them, unless your penis is six foot, six inches long,

if you're close enough to have sex with them, they're breathing on you. And you're going to go home and breathe on people that you're living with. And so you're not just taking a risk yourself. You're putting everybody else in your orbit, everybody else you're sheltering with at risk as well. And that's not right or fair. Do you live with your mother? Not anymore, but in the mid-80s when I was actually active young gay man, did. I was taking risk, but they were mine alone. I wasn't putting anybody else at risk who also

wasn't a sex partner. I know, but if you're not living with your mother, if she's not in the house, then you're controlled not to go see your mother. The theory is that by traversing the city to get to somebody, that could be a risk. You know, as restrictions are eased a bit, it may be possible to bring more people into your pod, you know, to a limited number of people that you are. You know, to a limited number of people that you are connected with. You know, human beings are social animals. We're also sexual animals, and people will go insane without touch,

insane without sex. Eventually, we're going to have to figure out a way to finesse this. But at this moment, right now, with the cases still rising, it just is a little too risky, I think, to contemplate, you know, bringing more people into your pod

and the kind of rationalizations people make when they're thinking with their dicks or thinking with their pussies to allow for what it is they want, as opposed to what is safe, not just for them as an individual, but for everybody else in their orbit. So do you ever worry people will get too used to this? And look, we've always had non-contact sex. I mean, I remember phone sex, we've started like in the 80s.

I've never done it. I would burst out laughing. I just think it's ridiculous. I think you're going to see more people experimenting with online sex. You're definitely seeing that. Not only are you seeing that. I think the stigma attached to it is falling away. Even before COVID-19, 40%, the plurality of opposite-sex couples,

we're now meeting online, first contact online. It was 80% of same-sex couples and higher. And it's just accelerating that trend. Now people are meeting online. And that's a good thing that people were meeting online. Because when you enter an online dating space or hook-up space, you're saying to everybody else in that space, you can approach me. There's not going to be any misunderstanding if you approach me at this moment.

and hit on me. And this is just, you know, giving more people who weren't yet already doing that a push. And you're seeing a lot more, not phone sex, Skype sex. You're seeing a lot more, much to the consternation of Zoom, people having sex on Zoom, despite Zoom's service agreement that doesn't allow people to be sexual on Zoom, but people are doing it anyway. Because sex is powerful and people will do it. And people will use whatever tools are at hand. And right now, the safest way to have sex with somebody who isn't a person that you're living with, is to meet them on the internet and have sex with them there. But meeting is not sad.

I can't believe I have to say this to you, Dan. Meeting is not sex. And, you know, doing anything when they're not in the same room, you call whatever you want. It's not sex. I'm not advocating that you go out and do something risky right now. That's not the point of this. I'm just asking about the future.

And like the Gen Z generation, I know they think if they're just talking to somebody a lot and they have never met them, they'll call that dating. I find that disturbing. I get questions all the time at my column on my podcast from people who say, you know, I've been with my boyfriend for 10 months. We've never actually met. And I don't think that it's a relationship

until you've actually met. And the advice used to be, don't direct message for someone for too long before that first meetings. You never know if you're going to click in person and really click chemically. And if you, you know, really make a huge emotional investment in somebody online,

and then you meet them and you don't click, you're going to be devastated or they're going to be devastated if you're not into them. And so the advice was, always, you know, get together for that first coffee after, you know, a day or two of swapping messages. Don't draw it out for weeks or months. But now we're in a situation where we have to turn that advice on its head. And I know cyber sex isn't IRL sex. It's not real life sex.

It's not skin-to-skin contact sex. And that is what people need. But in the absence of that, kind of its next best thing, it's like cybersex. Sex is in the name. It's not what you think of when somebody says sex, but I still think it counts. I'm glad to hear we're still going to have actual sex. We will have actual sex. And until about half an hour ago, I was going to predict sort of the golden age of glory holes might return because initial tests showed that there wasn't a virus and semen or vaginal secretion. So if you could carve a hole in the wall and get people together and then power wash that wall with the hole in it in between uses, maybe people could have sex that way. And glory holes would come roaring back and they wouldn't just be for creepy closeted priests and truck stops anymore.

But a new study just out of China actually did find virus, the coronavirus, in the semen of people who had recovered from corona infection. So the jury is still out on whether or not swapping fluids, even for people who've recovered from corona, is going to be safe. Well, okay. I know that's a bummer, isn't that? I'm sad. You're the expert, but I'm going to pass on the whole glory hole thing. So who do you think this has been tougher on? single people who are alone, completely alone,

or people who are married or are living together, and now they're cooped up with someone and they're driving each other nuts and it's turned out. What do you think is worse? Loneliness or the, I guess it's the individual. I actually don't think it's a competition. I think there are people out there who are alone

and very hurt and upset. Maybe even people began dating before this hit and they're now separated, or separated by, you know, an ocean continent from their partner, and they have no way of knowing when they're going to get back together again, and those folks are miserable. And there are a lot of people who are confined with their spouses. And, you know, in some cases, what we saw in cities in China after restriction were lifted was not a baby boom or a lot of people emerging pregnant. What we saw was a lot of

people rushing to get divorces. And my concern is, you know, one of the things that makes a relationship work is time apart built into that relationship. There's studies that show that, you know, couples who vacation separately occasionally, have different social circles, are stronger, and they last longer. And suddenly that couple where what helped that relationship work was that structured time apart, built into the relationship, they're suddenly thrown together in the same place 24 hours a day, and they may be misinterpreting the stress and conflict in the relationship as a sign that it doesn't work and they need to get out of it, as opposed to this doesn't work. These circumstance don't work for this relationship. And I'm afraid some people may end relationships when this is over,

that they shouldn't end. Wait, so I'll be sure if I understand the answer. So you're saying being alone is the worst one? No, I'm saying it's not a competition. Like, there are people who are alone and miserable. There are people who are being thrown together with spouses that maybe they barely liked

or were thinking about leaving in the first place or spouses that they like and the relationship is good. It's just this pressure of, you know, in this, you know, alien circumstance where you have to be with somebody 24 hours a day is putting a strong. on the relationship that may convince them when they need to get out of it, when what they actually need to do is just find a way,

even if you're in the same place, to get away from each other every once in a while. Yeah, that's a tough thing for a lot of people right now. So I thought this was really interesting. I saw it in the paper yesterday. 45% of husbands say they are doing the majority of the homeschooling of the children, and 3% of the wives agree. Yeah, that bears out across multiple studies about, you know, the housework and taking care of children

where the husbands overestimate the amount that they're doing. And maybe the wives underestimate it a bit, but yeah, men tend to think they're doing more than they actually are. And how is this? Has this been positive for your relationship? Yeah, you know, I shouldn't complain, but I do, so obviously I can. But, you know, Terry and I are very fortunate, and then we have like a nice big house,

and we have a kind of a skill, I think that was always there, which I've always said was a good thing about a relationship, is we've always been really good at being alone together, that we can be in the same room, and he can be reading a book, and I can be working, and we can just leave each other alone. There are couples who feel like if you're not staring into each other's eyes, at every moment that you're physically in the same space, there's something wrong with your relationship. And Terry and I have always been very good at ignoring each other when we needed to. Well said.

All right. Well, I'm glad you're well, and I look forward to seeing you sometime. forward to seeing you again soon. I'm glad you're well. And best wishes to everybody in the real-time family. And I hope we come through this all right. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. Be well. Thanks. Okay, now it's time for new rules, everybody. New rules. All right, new rule. Now that for the first time in history in New York City shut down its entire subway system just to clean it, they need to do this more often. Because I've been on those trains. And clearly, once every 116 years, just to doesn't cut it. In fact, whenever I hear that part in Thriller, where Vincent Price says the funk of 40,000 years, I think, yeah, the D-Train. New Rule, if reading the news is depressing

you, you have to try my new game where you find the name of a punk band in every headline. Like, pandemic responds. Meat shortage. Tonight, death toll projection. And of course, Asian Murder Hornet. New Rule, stop wearing your mask around your chin, either wear it or don't. But this? This is like putting the condom on your balls. New Rule, men who bring their guns to any protest about anything have to admit they just like guns. Same as women who think any political point is best hammered home by writing it on your body and taking their shirt off.

What do we want? I forget. When do we want it? Guns and tits. And a related new rule, someone has to remind the protesters that while you're out in front of the state capital armed with rifles, we're home in front of the computer armed with Photoshop. Now, I didn't make this. Somebody on the internet did. But the first thing I thought when I saw it was, wow, look at those three huge dicks. And they're holding those oversized dildos. And finally, new rule, just because Fox News is obsessed with the Biden sex assault. allegations. It doesn't mean the rest of us have to be. You may have noticed that Donald Trump

has one move. Accus you of the very thing he's guilty of. Puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet. Remember that one? Okay. Well, now it's Joe Biden grabs women by the pussy. Not that he even needs to say it. The liberal media and liberal party is doing it for him, exactly what Republicans want. to go down the rabbit hole of Joe Biden's sex monster. So now everybody's investigating, but there is no fact-finding here. It's a he said, she said, she said something else entirely. Yes, Biden's accuser Tara Reid has been contradicted by multiple people. Most importantly, Tara Reid.

This last year, she said of Biden, I wasn't scared of him that he was going to take me in a room or anything. it wasn't that kind of vibe. She suggested she had filed a sex harassment report. Now she says she didn't. She says she was fired by Biden's office, but in deleted posts, she said she left because, quote, I love Russia with all my heart.

President Putin scares the power elite in America because he is a compassionate, caring, visionary leader, his obvious reverence for women, children, and animals, and his ability with sports is intoxicating to American women. What? What the fuck? We're letting this person change the subject

from Donald Trump, lethal incompetent, to Joe Biden's sex monster? She literally wrote a love letter to the murderer trying to keep Biden from the White House. Yet the New York Times is calling for the DNC to establish a truth-past, on this? Truth panel, huh? Which part? Putin's reverence for animals or how intoxicating he is to women? And Democrats are coalescing around the position that this accusation must be thoroughly vetted for the party to keep its credibility.

Well, you know, credibility certainly is a problem for the party on this issue, mostly because they woke themselves into a corner when they adopted believe women as their slogan when it should always have been take accusations seriously. Kirsten Gillibrand said of the Al Franken allegations, the women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment, so it was. That was never tenable, because believing everything doesn't make you noble, it makes you gullible, and leaves us with a world where Republicans don't care about this stuff, so it's just a unilateral weapon that is used only against,

Democrats. Trump rides the bus with Billy Bush. We throw Al Franken under it. You know, Democrats are the party of choice. We can choose not to completely fuck ourselves over this. I know it's a sex scandal, and in normal times, that's what we do instead of issues. But there are actually some pretty big problems going on right now. I don't know if you noticed, but America has turned into a failed state that does a worse job keeping its citizens alive during a pandemic than Cambodia. And to me, that's a little more important than Tara Reid achieving closure. She says Biden attacked her, and he says he didn't. Those are their positions. How about this for yours? Don't know, never will, don't care. I care in the macro about women being attacked, of course,

But on this one, I'm with Bogie, who said, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Everybody says, we need to do everything we can to defeat Trump. Yeah, except anything. Well, I'm no good at being noble either, but if in 1993 Joe Biden had grabbed my nuts in a corridor,

and I was in Washington that year. And I had this knowledge and revealing it could hurt the guy running against Trump. I'd save it for my memoirs. I'd like to think that I'd have a little more perspective. We have a president who says drink bleach. Geez, you waited 27 years.

It couldn't hold another few months? That's what I would like to ask, Ms. Reed. Why now? I'm not saying why not 27 years ago. I understand. it can take victims years to come forward. I'm saying, why not before Super Tuesday? Why not last fall when we still had a dozen other candidates to choose from?

Why wait until Biden is our only hope against Trump and then take him down? This story is gathering and importance it should not have. There is so much at stake in this next election. The entire world needs to be put back together like Humpty Dumpty. why should one person's victimhood trump everyone else's? Okay, that's our show. I want to thank my guest, Justin Amash, Amy Holmes, and Dan Savage.

We're taking next week off. We'll be back on the 22nd. See you then. Thank you, folks. 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.