Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #543: Senator Bernie Sanders, Jim Belushi

Episode Date: September 26, 2020

Bill’s guests are Senator Bernie Sanders, Jim Belushi, Coleman Hughes and Bakari Sellers. (Originally aired 9/25/20) 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. Thank you very much. Wow. Masked and anonymous. Thank you very much. Thank you for...

I appreciate it. Now, please, I know you went through a lot of shit to be here. You had to get tested right, and your masks and you're sitting apart. I really appreciate it because this has made such a difference to have, you know, for me and the audience,

to quote Jerry Falwell's Pool Boy, there's nothing like a live audience. That's what... But it's 38 days before the election. It feels less like an election, more like a going-out-a-business sale. Doesn't it? It's like, all rules must go in America. But, yeah, this week, the president

fucking flat-out said it, what I've been saying he's going to say forever. They're not leaving. You know, that the law and order president refused to commit to the peaceful transference of power should he lose. I mean, even banana republics

are like, this is bananas. I mean, right? If you are the president, the only acceptable answer to the question is of will you submit to the peaceful transference of power is yes.

Not We're looking at it strongly. Not we'll see what happens. Are these fucking people insane? This guy will do anything to steal an election. This week he was talking about how they found a lot of ballots thrown in the river. Yes, that's a big election problem. A wet-ass ballots.

That's really... I just... I can just say this. If you're a black voter in a red state, you've got to get in line now. I'm sorry. Just put it that way, but... Seriously, I mean, Trump called mail-in voting today.

The scam the Democrats are trying to pull. He said, this scam will be before the Supreme Court. Yes, which we're currently stealing a seat on. So vote all you want. Because I'm staying and suing. Because nothing says democracy, like a president who's a squatter. And, you know, the... I think he picked the person for the court today,

but all week at the rallies or the Trump people have been chanting, fill that seat, fill that seat. Even the tea baggers are going, that sounds gay. Tea bagging was bad, but apparently the pick is going to be this Amy Comey. We'll be saying this name a lot, I'm sure, because she's a fucking nut.

Religion. I was right about that one too. Amy, sorry, but Amy Comey Barrett, Catholic, really Catholic. I mean really, really Catholic, like speaking in tongues. Like, she doesn't believe in condoms, what she has in common with Trump,

because he doesn't either. I remember that from Stormy Dam. So she's going to be on the court. RBG laying in state. He visited RBG's casket. He, when he walked in, uh, everybody went, boo. Boo. And, of course, all the ass kissers around Trump, they told him,

no, sir, they're saying coup, co. It's so funny, but we're losing our country. Okay, but I'm glad we're laughing. So Trump unveiled, uh, was it today, his new, his new, his old, his forever coming great national health care plan, which of course is not a plan at all. There's never a plan. It's just, we'll work with Congress,

and Mexico will co-pay for it. This plan, this nothing ever planned. It's been two weeks away since 2016. In the time it took Trump not to come up with the plan, nature came up with the whole new disease. Yeah, terrible milestone this week. 200,000 dead from coronavirus in America,

and rumor, it's a rumor, that the 200,000th dead was a big Trump fan. And this is sweet. before she died, the Make a Wish Foundation brought her a black teenager to yell at. No, I'm standing by that joke. That's a fine joke. I didn't do it.

And the Washington Post this week reported that Trump, in unguarded moments, says racist stuff about blacks and Jews. Yeah, I got news for your post. He's not that great in guarded moments either. Apparently, he says things like blacks are lazy, Jews are greedy, and Slovenian women are never in the mood for sex.

All right, we got a great show. Bukari Sellers and Coleman Hughes are here. And a little later, we'll be speaking with the great Jim Belushi. But first up, he is the longest serving independent in Congress, Iran, for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. You know him, you love him. Bernie Sanders is over here. Bernie, how you doing?

Bill not hearing anything. What's that? Can't hear you. You can't hear me? Now I can hear you. Yeah, I passed out the joint in the control room. So, Bernie, you look tan, rested and ready. They always look better when they get off the campaign trail.

It must be grueling campaigning. But look, you made a speech yesterday, and, you know, it was about what we do when Trump says he's not leaving. And I imagine this is a speech you never thought. you would have to make. Bill, I mean, that's absolutely true. I mean, this country today faces enormous problems. We have massive income and wealth inequality.

We're the only major country not to guarantee health care to all. You've got millions of people working for starvation wages. We got climate change. We got systemic racism. We got a whole host of problems. Never in a million years that I ever think that I would have to give a speech about what do we do, if a president refuses to leave office if he loses. I never, never thought that I would have to give that speech or anybody else.

But that is where we are today. And I would simply say, Bill, I know you have made this point many, many times. Listen to what Trump is saying. Don't brush it off. Don't say, oh, this guy's crazy. You'll say this any other day. Listen to what he is saying. and what he is saying over and over again is, quote, the only way that we, i.e., Trump, can lose the election is if it is rigged.

End of quote. In other words, if we win, that's great. And if we lose, we really didn't lose because it's rigged. You all know mail-in ballots are very dangerous. There are a hoax. They're a scam. So we cannot lose this election. And obviously, we're not leaving office.

But I've been, I mean, I asked you this question in April. I've been asking this of Democrats for years, and they pretty much just laughed it off. You said, in April, I asked you, what do we do? You said, well, you mobilize the American people in a way that they've never been mobilized before to remind the president, whether he likes it or not, we live in a democracy. He said, I think we have to make it clear that if he loses the election, he'll be out of office and replaced by the new president. I don't hear a plan there.

I just hear a wish. We wish that would happen. I still don't know what the plan is. Well, you know, the bottom line is there are things that we have to do now to make sure that Biden wins. And if Trump attempts to stay in office after losing, there will be a number of plans out there to make sure that he is evicted from office. What?

But right now, in the next five weeks, our job is to defeat him and defeat him badly. Because the truth is, if we win in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Minnesota, in Pennsylvania, apparently Biden is now ahead in Ohio, we win in Florida. It will be very hard, very hard for Trump to try to stay in office. So my message is, number one. He's good at doing things that are very hard.

Again, I just don't hear what the real, I don't, I don't hear the bones on this. I just hear we want it to turn out good, and it should turn out good, and we're the good people. I don't hear what we're... I've never heard what we're actually going to do, what we can do. Well...

You haven't heard it because it's never happened before in American history. So you are asking for a plan to do something that no one has ever had to do before. So without giving you any... I don't know that anyone has... the specific plan. But at the end of the day, what will have to happen, in my view,

is the American people by the millions, and I would hope, by the way, that Republicans join us, who understand that democracy is more important than any particular candidate. They won't and they don't. They won't and they don't.

They won't join you, because they never join you, and they don't believe that. Well, I'm not talking about members of Congress. And if the point is that Trump has dominated... Isn't that who matters? No, what matters is the American people. What doesn't... And if millions of people after this election, in one form or another, yet to be determined, say to this guy, you are no longer the president.

What form? And early in January, you are leaving office. But there's no form. You will leave office. The form is this. I know, here's the Atlantic this week says, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors

because we don't, of course, have a direct democracy. We have electors. We have an electoral college. In battleground states, where Republicans hold the legislative majority. Now, I've been looking into this. Electors, what does the Constitution say about it? What can a cheater do?

Is this a norm or is this a law? It seems like it's a norm. And that's what Trump is great at doing. He says all these things that we thought were laws really weren't. They were just things that people did because other people had some degree of honor, but I don't. So I'm not going to do it. And apparently, Bill, Bill, that is right. These electors...

Your point is right. In other words, theoretically you could, you know, Biden can win Michigan by... six points, and Trump will say, well, we think this massive vote of fraud, and the legislature is appointing a Trump slate of electors. That's what you're talking about.

Theoretically, they can do that. But the outrage in this country, the willingness of people to say, sorry, that is not what you're going to do, and you're not going to destroy American democracy, I think you're underestimating that reality. And I think that

is exactly what will happen. Well, I, with all due respect, I think you're overestimating it. I don't, I don't know, because I don't know what, what form does it take? We're in the streets every day. I've seen that. I've seen people do that in countries. I've never, not here. Well, you've never seen that here because you've never seen a president try to undermine

American democracy in the way Trump may be trying to do it. So all that I'm saying here is let's take one step at a time. The first step is, let us defeat Trump. Let us defeat him badly. And I think if he defeat him badly, he's going to have no choice but to leave office. If he refuses to do that, then we got plan number two. And it's a little bit premature to talk about it. But at the bottom line is, I do not believe.

You and I may disagree on this. I do not believe that people in this country, including millions who put their lives on the line to defend democracy, are simply going to say, and roll over and say, okay, Mr. Trump, you can stay in office even as you destroyed democracy and even as you lost the election.

I don't think that's going to happen, frankly. Okay, so what do you talk about privately with Republicans right now, like this week? Now, seriously. I mean, you're a senator, you've worked with Mitch McConnell for years, you see him in the elevator.

Do you say to him, Mitch, Look, I know we don't agree on anything, but you're not really going to do this. Are you, I mean, I see how you stole the Supreme Court seat. You switched on that. But you're not really going to let Trump do this. Well, you know that they are now giving lip service. You know, as soon as Trump repeated his remarks that he might not leave office, even if he lost. You know, all these Republicans saying, oh, well, you know, Trump says crazy things.

Of course he will. we believe in the Constitution, we believe in the rule of law. That is what they're giving lip service to. Do I have absolute confidence that Republican senators will, in fact, have the courage to stand up to Trump and say, you lost the election? You're out of here. I think some will. I think some will not. Now, how many will do the right thing?

I don't know. But I'm counting more on the American people than I am on the recent people than I am on the Republicans and Congress. Okay, so say in the best possible worlds, Biden wins and he takes office, what do we do with these Republicans after that?

Ones who showed when it mattered that they were willing to cast aside democracy. Do we just say, well, you know what? No biggie. You were willing to throw democracy under the bus,

but come on back in. Is that what we say? Well, no. I think what you say, is, you know what, guys, you showed an incredible disrespect for the Constitution, for the rule of law, for support of authoritarianism. And you know what? We have control over the Senate now. And what we are going to do is use the Senate to represent the needs of the working families of this country whose needs have been ignored for to law. And you are not going to obstruct us. And don't lecture us, we are going to move forward in a democratic way, fair way, to finally make sure that the desperation

that working families are experiencing today, unemployment, low wages, no health care, unable to send your kids to college. Whether you like it or not, whether your billionaire friends like it or not, we are going to move forward and protect working families and restore faith in American democracy. That's the way you do. Thank you. Great to see you. Congratulations, by the way, on a great campaign and on moving the Democratic agenda to write where you wanted it to be. All right. Thank you very much. Bernie Sanders, let's move our, meet our panel. Hey. Hey, guys. All right. Good evening. Good evening. How you doing? He is a CNN, political analyst, and the author of My Vanishing Country. A memoir, Bukari Sellers is over here.

Thank you. How you doing? Great to see you again. and he's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and host of the podcast Conversations with Coleman. Coleman Hughes, great to see you. All right, so... All right, guys, you know, I must tell you, first of all, there's many times when we've had

an African-American guest on the show, and I've said in the production meeting, let's not talk about the black issue. I think that's more of a compliment, is to say, we're all Americans, we're all people, we don't have to always get the black question. But, Tonight you're going to have to. I mean, we once had on

Andrew Sullivan and Barney Frank, two gay men. And I was like, let's have gay not come up. But we don't live in that country anymore. No. So,

and I just want to ask the first thing. It seems like I live in a country where half the country sees that there's no racism. I've made many jokes about the polling that always shows that about two-thirds of Republicans say reverse racism is a worse problem.

That's been a fodder of comedy here. And then, really? So they say racism is gone. And then there's a big part now, I think critical race theory, they call it, where racism is everything and everywhere.

Please tell me that we all agree the answer somewhere in the middle? Oh, definitely. I mean, I think we all agree. I think we would all agree that the answer is somewhere in the middle, but for many people in this country, particularly black people, for the last 4001 year, we've been dealing with this issue of race. It's not something that you can just say, today I'm going to put my race suit on and put my race card in my pocket and go out here and play it, and tomorrow I may not. I mean, we're dealing with this. I'm raising black children. I go to work every day,

have to be unapologetically black, and bring my whole self. I'm on CNN, and I have to go out there and articulate the issues that that that don't. directly affect my community. And so, and it's exhausting. But you want to talk about those issues too, right? Yeah, but it's also exhausting, too. I mean, I don't want to talk about, I don't want to be on TV where we have another funeral, whether or not it's George Floyd or Jacob Blake or Brianna Taylor.

I don't want to do that. But to be black in America, Bill, I think it's necessary to understand that to be black in America is to be in a perpetual state of grieving. And we've seen that throughout COVID. We've seen that throughout this year. And that happens to be a reality for many people of color. I mean, the way I look at racism, it's kind of like murder. It exists everywhere in every society since the beginning of time.

It probably will always exist. We can make progress in reducing it, but it's always going to be there to some degree. The notion that we can ever get it to zero is naive and utopian. We always have to denounce it, of course. But as you say, I definitely think racism exists in America. There's no doubt about that. It's also possible to exaggerate it. how much racism exists, to mistake a problem for being about racism when it's actually about

a particular institution like the police or the criminal justice system being flawed in ways that don't narrowly... I heard someone grown, and this is important, because, you know, this is what no other show will talk about, but it has to be talked about. Are we reacting with data and facts and reality to the police problem, or are we just reacting? No, so I think that's a false question. So are we reacting to data? The data shows that in the past year,

1,010 people as of today have been killed by law enforcement. We know that black people in this country are two times more likely to be killed by law enforcement than their white colleagues, right? But there is also the factor of how many interactions with black people. That's called poor policing. I mean, what that's called... It's called crime disparity.

That's called broken. When black people account. for 50% of murder victims and perpetrators and are overrepresented in contacts with the police, you have to take that into account when you look at the total amount. You also take into account over-policing of those communities as well.

You also take... But most black people in America say they do not want the police defundered. Many say they want as many or more police. Well, that's... So defunding the police, just so we can be clear since the world is watching us, does not mean that when I call 911

or my mom calls 911 one, the police will not show. up. But what it does mean is that we won't have bloated police budgets, but instead we'll have after-school centers. Instead, we'll have mental health professionals who arrive on the scene. Instead, we will actually be able to build community. That's what that means. I think we can partly agree on that. I think we need less policing of petty drug crime. Correct. Look at that. We got to look at that. We're making progress. Right. But but more policing of, you know, homicide and violent crime in neighborhoods where over half of

of crimes or violent crimes are not getting solved. So it's a complex, to me, just people have this idea that I want to see the police budget cut by half. I want to see the police improve, whatever that means for the budget. That might mean spending more to train them more and so on and so. But I think we agree because,

not fully, but I don't want, I just don't want less police. I just want better police. Right. Right. Okay. So that's the issue where we're real, because, you know, I worry that there's going to be more riots and more unrest in the streets. And over something that may not be true.

Now, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal commented about Breonna Taylor yesterday. They got a world of shit about it today. And I think what they were saying is, we don't know if this is a racist cop killing or just plainly, it's horrible policy. No knock entries. Plainly anyone's going to get killed in that situation. I agree.

And I think we don't. We don't need to have no-knock warrants. We don't need to have chokeholds. We need to ban those across the board. I think Democrats and Republicans alike, if you want to take from Tonight Show a policy initiative, it's that. However, it's not the fact of the killing of Breonna Taylor per se. It's the fact that there was a lack of accountability.

That is the biggest issue. It's the lack. And Malcolm X said it best. I didn't think I would be quoting Malcolm X on Bill Martin Knight, Malcolm X always talked about the fact that the most disrespected person on the planet is the black woman. Period. And we see that day in and day out,

but it's the lack of accountability. You cannot tell me that if that was a white woman who was asleep, the police came in her house, fired 20 shots, that there would be no accountability, no indictments for the murder of that woman. So five years ago, a white man named Derek Cruz in a very similar situation, no knock warrant. They shot him in the face completely unarmed.

What that tells me is there is a much deeper issue than racism. There's a reflexive urge to go to the race issue. I understand it, but the truth is that police in general generally do not get punished for misbehavior. It's very rare, and it's white, it's black. So we have to solve that issue, of course, but reflexively making it about race. And this is, they were, there are cops doing a cop job

with a cop handbook and cop training. I feel like that's like the biggest problem here. Cops, you know, I mean, you've talked about this a lot. I mean, you have said racist cops killing unarmed blacks is a false premise. Because if you look at, again, the data, it's like if you threaten cops in any way, they will kill you. That's the problem.

And look, they have a very difficult job. This is a country full of guns and full of nuts. Let's be honest. No, I agree. I agree with that. But if you threaten them, if you resist, if you do... They think that that allows them to just neutralize the threat, i.e. fucking kill you. That's why they empty, like, the whole clip into...

They've got to stop doing that, emptying the whole clip when they feel threatened. I just... I'm not sure that it's a race thing. I fundamentally believe, though, that you see more de-escalation, that you see more individuals who are able to go home, Dylan Roof killed nine people in a church, including one of my friends, right? He killed nine people, drove all the way to North Carolina and got Burger King, right? He happened to make it to prison alive.

And the most recent case with Kyle Rittenhouse, White Boy crosses lines with the AR-15, kills two protesters, walks directly by the police with his hands up, and they just say, come on back, come on, come on by. And so you see these... That's not representative, though. Right, you're cherry-picking examples. There are plenty... Did they not happen? I mean, the truth is that...

No, you're cherry-picking them. They happen. But for every example you could come up with, I can come up with examples of white people getting killed in precisely the same circumstances that black people do, either reaching for a gun or seeming to reach for a gun. And if we're talking about what violent crimes go unpunished,

actually the bigger problem is that black murders go unsolved more often than white murders do. So it's not that the puns that... police are just ignoring white violence or violence committed by white people, right? If anything, they need to be paying more attention to violence that is committed and suffered by black people. I think that the point that I'm attempting to make is not necessarily that interaction, although I think that's a big issue.

One of the larger points is the lack of accountability. And so when a law enforcement officer... However... When a law enforcement officer goes in and just, as you said, empties a clip, or we all admit that law enforcement officers have very difficult jobs, right? They keep our community safe. They have very, very difficult jobs.

I am just saying, though, when you absolutely do not need to kill somebody or shoot somebody seven times in the back or whatever it may be, just be held accountable. Of course. Of course. And, you know, things have changed in that area. I remember doing editorials on this show

about you have to hold cops accountable for this. And it did happen. The last five years, a lot of them, who did those horrendous things like shooting someone in the back were held accountable. But Breonna Taylor doesn't even get justice. Of course not.

This is a very different scenario because the cop was fired upon first, right? Obviously, Kenneth Walker had every right to fire because he thought they were intruders. Totally understandable. However, once the cop is fired upon, he has to have a right to fire back. There's also a level, and I don't want to...

It can't... But it doesn't... But yes, because if you walk in and you do not announce... yourself, right? Horrible. What's the policy, right? Wouldn't you say that's the power? Well, I am just, like, I get it. Yes, I, okay. But let me just, can I say this to you

real quick? I think the system actually worked perfectly. I honestly do, because I don't think the system is built for people of color. It's not built for black folk to have accountability. And it's just not. The system worked the way it was supposed to. What we have to do is either tear the system down or reform it

and reimagine what law enforcement should look like. Okay. Let me let me ask a quick question about something. I mean, we seem to have changed the goal from not seeing color. That's the old liberalism that I grew up with. What? What? You gave me a look.

You think colorblind is a thing? I think it's a goal. Not that we don't see it, that it doesn't matter. No. Never. That was certainly the, that was never the goal? No, I thought. That was the goal.

That was the goal. For the entire civil rights movement for Martin Luther King, Byard Westin. No, no. Frederick Douglass, that was never the goal to them? You didn't have SNIC and SCLC, you didn't have King so you could all of a sudden not see us for being black. No, it's not. That's not what we're saying.

I said it doesn't matter. But it doesn't, though. Race exists, but I'm not going to judge you on the basis of it. I'm going to judge you as an individual. And that is something that has been lost in the discourse right now. That's not even a goal for many people anymore. People want to say, my blackness is the most important thing about me. You have to meditate on your whiteness and feel guilty for the person.

I don't want you to feel guilty about your wife. You're not saying. I want you to recognize who I am. I bring my... So what I'm saying is I bring my whole black self. Yeah, but I bring my whole black self to the table. I bring it to work. I want you to see the diversity. I want you to see the richness of my culture,

the richness of my heritage, the richness of my blackness. I mean... I don't know why. I don't know if we're really having an argument about it. I mean, I recognize those qualities about you. Does it have to be on my mind every second? We're having a beer? Boy, do you see the game today?

Boy, you're diverse, man. Not at all. But I do want you to give it value, though. Nobody wants you to be colorblind. I just find that to be nonsensical. No, but to be color, obviously, no one can actually be blind to color. Even literally colorblind people can see.

But at the end of the day, it's about where we're pushing towards as a society. Are we pushing towards a society where I have friends who say they're kids, in elementary school are getting workshops where they're separating white kids from black kids, and this is how they're teaching them about race. They're teaching them to see their friends

as a black person first. Is that the direction we go in in terms of our anti-racism, or do we have a different anti-racism that's more universal and says, obviously racism is horrible, and the reason it's horrible is because race is only skin deep. I mean, I have a 15-year-old daughter. I have a 15-year-old daughter

who left me as conflict as I could possibly be after the death of George Floyd. She got with her girlfriends, put on a mask, dressed in all black and she went out and painted a black lives matter sign, right? She and her two other black girlfriends had Black Lives Matter sign. I was conflicted. Why? Because I was so proud. We come from an activist family. But I was also so distraught that at 15, she can't be like Baron Trump.

She just can't go out and be a 15-year-old. She has to reaffirm her humanity and her identity on a sign and fight for people to recognize that humanity. I just think colorblindness is bullshit. I'm going to interrupt this to return once more to the theme that's obsessed me. There's the headline I saw in the New York Times yesterday. Trump won't commit to peaceful transfer of power. And it was on page 15.

This is not the paper I grew up with, but okay. They wrote Mr. Trump's refusal to endorse perhaps the most fundamental tenet of democracy, as any president in recent memory surely would have, was the latest instance of which he has cast an uncertainty about the November election. I would put that on the front page. That's just crazy me. And, you know, they wrote the once unthinkable notion

that a president might refuse to accept the results of an election. Well, it wasn't unthinkable to everybody, and I'm not going to say this anymore, but we did make a montage. And then I'm going to shut up about it, but it does fucking stick in my craw. That nobody listened to me

and that I got no help from the New York Times, Washington Post scene, and mainstream media should have amplified. Are you staring at me? I'm not staring. I don't know. But I'm saying mainstream media, I got no help amplifying the point I was making. And he was answering me.

I'll show that tape too. But show the first montage, please. I don't see him leaving willingly. I don't see him leaving under any condition, including people knocking on the door with guns. But he'd be Scarface. I just don't. I don't see this man giving it up.

And I just think he has many cards he hasn't played yet. He is not going to leave until he wants to leave. I don't think he would even leave if he lost an election in 2020. Oh, I'm the guy who says he's not leaving even if he loses the election. People have been saying I'm an alarmist and I'm crazy because I keep saying he's not going to leave even if he loses. I don't think he's leaving. He's not going to leave even if he loses the election.

So I'm a third-rate respected comedian Who says if he loses, he's not leaving. No, I've been saying for a very long time now that I don't think he's leaving. And I will bet you a million dollars right now that if you lose the 2020 election, I'm right and you won't leave. He's not leaving.

He probably will have lost the election, Trump, and he probably will not leave. You know, he's made me part of his act because I always say he's not going to leave. He's not leaving on January 20th. Because if Trump loses the election in November, he's not going to leave. I've been saying for a number of years,

that if Trump loses the election, he's not going to leave. I cannot picture that man gracefully conceding and walking away. You're the only person I could get interested in my theory that Trump was not going to leave. You know, like I say, I get it that, you know, these mainstream media people don't like me, probably because I have people like you Coleman on my show, people who walk outside the boundaries like I do.

We don't just, you know, take it, bend the knee, and just parrot the one true opinion. So we're bad people. So they don't cover this show. But on this one, you could have given me a little help. Because, let me show it. Because there is one guy. There is one person who was amplifying this.

Trump. This crazy Bill Maher. You ever hear of this one? He says, you know he's not leaving. I'm telling you he's not leaving. And in four years, he's not leaving. You know, he's not leaving. You know he's never leaving office, don't you?

He's not leaving. You know that. He's not leaving, you know that. He's not leaving. No, I'm telling you, he's not leaving. He'll never leave. You know he's not leaving, don't you? He's never going to leave. He's going to stay. All right, so that's it.

I won't bring it up again. But can I ask you, gentlemen, one, what do you foresee for November, January. I want to know your prediction. And if you think there's something we can do about it. And also, it's very relevant to the race issue because a stolen election will be seen

very much as a race issue. And it, of course, largely is. I mean, it is all... I mean, it's everybody's election being stolen, but it is especially an African-American electorate that is being deprived. So

what do you think? What do you think? I think Democrats are proverbial bedwetters. You know that. I know that. We are. I was pretty hard on Bernie, but I love them. Yeah, I love, you know, I love them too.

But I think that there has to be a priority. Everybody's asking Willie Lee, but you've got to beat them first, right? So that's the most important thing. I don't think you're going to have an election day. You think that's the most important thing, just winning? Yeah, right. That's first. Because you can't get the step two.

It doesn't matter. I don't think it's going to be... I don't think it's going to be election day. I think it's going to be election week or election one. Right. It is. Well, that's not an opinion. That's the truth.

And I also don't... The ballots won't come in on November 3. I didn't even know. I mean, Trump taught us to think of the things that are, you know, not imaginable. I didn't know you could just take up mailboxes. Just take them up off the street. I didn't know that was possible. That's, again, norms.

So... He just runs right over them. So I would encourage people just to go down and vote early. Don't put your ballot in a mailbox. Go down and vote early if you can. Put a mask on. Stand six to the way. That's right.

That's right. You got a... The virus is... scary, but Trump is scarier. That should be on that. The Trump is scarier than the virus. With Trump, people are always trying to interpret what he's saying and put it in one of two categories. Either the he's serious category or the category where he said, oh, why can't we use our nukes? And then, you know, nothing has come of that. So my bet is at the end of the day that if he is defeated, he will leave, but he'll complain, he won't concede, he'll say it was rigged.

It was the deep state. It's fake news. 30% of the country will agree with him and he'll feel vindicated from whatever mansion he's living in for the end of time. That's my guess. What I'm really worried about though is... I think so. I mean, what I'm really worried about is that there will be rioting in the streets.

There will be riders on the left burning cities if Trump wins or seems like he won on election day because the mail-in ballots haven't come. I'm afraid there could be far-right militias clashing with those rides. Oh, I think this...

Whoever wins there's going to be trouble in the streets. I think... You know, I believe, and I think the president enjoys this violence, but I do think... Of course he does. Of course he does. The Boogaloo Boys. Yes, it's all good for him.

It's amazing to me real quick about the chaos. When we were having mass ordinances in Michigan and Wisconsin, you had all of these armed militias with these ARs and AKs walking and hanging the governor of Kentucky and effigy. And nobody said anything. They said

Liberate all of these states. Oh, my God, we love our guns, right? But you start marching because somebody dies, and they're like, oh, wait a minute now. We're a little nervous. I mean, there's going to be guns. And I'm afraid to say, I think, when this has happened in other countries,

what has to happen is the military steps in. And I think maybe Trump's original sin when he was running, which was saying McCain wasn't a war hero, and calling the military suckers and losers. I hope that will come back to haunt him. And the military, might have to step in on our side.

And I think they might. All right. Let's move on. Something light and frothy. He's an actor, musician, advisory board member for the last prisoner project who hosts the three-part Discovery Channel series Growing Belushi.

Jim Belushi is over here. Jim? How are you doing it? That's a crazy way to do it. I don't know. It's great. I haven't been in a studio. No.

But, you know, me, as a lifelong pothead, when I read, that you had gotten full on into the pot business. I mean, I said to myself, one thing. Is he holding? And, oh, you... Oh, well, that's it. Really?

I'm always holding something, man. You've got thousands of acres of pot, and you give me this. I mean, I'm watching your show. You're serious. You're doing a reality show, basically, on being in the pot business. enjoying it? Oh, you seem to. I'd love it.

I mean, I love the farming of it. I mean, this is agriculture. The actual growing. The actual growing. I got my hands in the soil. I'm keeping the soil at 64 degrees in order for the micronutrients to go out of the roots

in order for the D.H. Cedar eyes. I'm pruning it. I'm harvesting it. I'm curing it to 12%. You must trim it. I am... I am running it to the dispensary. I am having a ball up there.

I hope you're not quitting acting. I was watching the movie Thief. Oh, yeah, my first movie. You were great. I was Michael Mann. With Jimmy Con? And I was like 1980. 1980?

This guy's been around 40 years? I've done a lot, Bill. I've done a lot. You have done a lot. That's what I'm saying. And by the way, I'm bringing in. I'm bringing in both. I'm bringing in the acting and the cannabis because of the show.

I'm bringing everything I know to do. We don't want to lose you as an actor. but your family is involved with this. I mean, I'm trying to find out happily. Sometimes it seems, sometimes not. I mean, to have the, you know, sit them down and say, hey, I'm having a big change in my life gang. We're moving to a pot farm and becoming farmers.

It's a little green acres. It's very green acres, by the way. And the show actually kind of feels like green acres at the beginning. No, it does. Yeah, my family, you know, They're, you know, they actually had an intervention on me. They actually, my son was worried that I was going to blow all my money and he wouldn't have money for college.

And my wife was worried I would never get an acting job again. And, but you know what, Bill, this plant is... Oh, you know, please. It's beautiful, yeah. Please, don't even. Don't even. I mean, it's just ridiculous. The medicine involved in this.

No, I, you know. We don't have to, we have to go there. Okay. Preach into the converted. Yeah, you know. You know that. It's a beautiful point. I think I smoke more than you.

I think so. You're not a big, you're not a smoker. I'm a microdoser, you know. I've had a lot of trauma in my life. What is the point of that? It just chills you out. Really? Yeah, it just kind of takes away the screaming.

But isn't the goal to get high? I never understood these people. I smoke, I go to sleep. I smoke it. Yeah, well, it's a medicine now. I mean, you smoke to chill out. There's a lot of PTSD that's going on. I was a veteran that I ran to that was a medic in Iraq war,

and he said, I saw things that happened to the human body that nobody should ever witness. He said, I have PTSD. They gave me a bottle this big of 600 oxycotton. And I got off of it, and he said, your strain, your black diamond O.G is the only strain that allows me to talk to my wife, my children, and sleep. And he teared up, and he hugged me.

And I said, hey, man, I didn't make this. And he said, no, but, no. you're a steward. And that was the paradigm shift for me to move on from, this is about getting high and getting loaded to, there's real medicine in this that's really helping people

stop the screaming. The screaming from anxiety. So I do. I'm microdose. I do like 2.5 milligrams of this bang chocolate that go to sleep at night. And I feel fresh in the morning. I don't do

Ambien or Xanax or PM stuff that makes you feel terrible. It is a beautiful, beautiful way to medicate anxiety, trauma, sleep, hopelessness. And it's also, you know, stimulates creativity. You know that. And music, and the touch of your lover's skin. And it makes you feel good.

And when you feel good, you have more compassion for people. It's all the wellness and cannabis. Yeah. Where's that big oxy bottle now? No, I'm joking, of course. But, look, I mean, I saw what you put on your Instagram post. You said your brother would be alive today if it had just stopped at pot. Well, Danny Aykroyd's one that said it.

And he said, you know, Jimmy, if your brother was a potter, if Johnny was a pothead, he'd be alive today. And it really made me think about it. And I know John suffered from CTE. He was a star football player. He banged his head so many times the middle linebacker. and he actually seizureed in front of me at home one time and we didn't know what it was Bill. I mean, I actually saved his life.

I wish I could have done it the second time, but the first time I did. And then when he went to college and started using cannabis, I think he found his medicine. But back then, it was considered a drug. It's still considered a Schedule I drug. But if we knew what we know about cannabis today back then, I think that would have been a great medicine for my brother, Jen.

I do. I really believe he'd be alive today. And I got to tell you, you know, it's not easy to be like the son of a great man or the brother of a great comic, but you carved out your own place. You know, you really did. You took a difficult situation and you had your own comic genius. Yeah, you really did. Thank you, Bill.

And I know it's really important to you, this last prisoner project. It kind of reminded me of what John Kerry said. Remember his famous thing when he got back from the Vietnam War? He said, talking about the last man. to die for a mistake. And you want to get people right out of prison who are there because they shouldn't be for marijuana.

Well, there's a last prisoner project that was started by Steve Dansell, who was the godfather of cannabis here in California. And I support it because I really found out the real history of cannabis. You know, it's never been about

the plant. It's always been about who's using it. So what we know is in America, America's marijuana, they came early in the last century, like 1910 from sailors, from Afro-Caribbean sailors that come to New Orleans. And then there was the refugees from the Mexican Revolution that came on the southern border. And there was a lot of people in America that didn't like those people. And they created race control with the laws.

That's when the laws began. And they were targeted in the disparity. in the community of color being arrested, the enforcement is four to one. I'm so glad you brought that up because something we could have got to in the other discussion, the drug war, is so much, is responsible for so much of this.

I got possible pot twice in high school. Really? Yeah. In high school? High school? Wow. I never even smoked it in high school. I saved myself.

And I didn't go to jail. You know, and as a white guy, who runs a pot farm, I'm making money selling pot, I got a TV show on it, you know, it's on Discovery Channel, by the way. You know, I have to sit on my farm,

you know, I'm doing something that they did. There's 40,000 people incarcerated. And three-quarters of them are people in color. We've got to get them out. Set them free. Thank you. All right. Jim Belushi, everybody. Thank you. All right.

Time for new rules. Okay, we even got to the drug war. All right. New rules, new rule. Fox News. Oh, yes, this is so true. Fox News has to stop trying so hard to find celebrities who were voting for Trump.

It's just sad. Last week's front page news was that liberal Hollywood has lost Samare Armstrong, who I looked up on IMDB, and it said, Beats the fuck out of me. And look, I'm glad Samar Armstrong won't be bullied into silence. but nobody's bullying her.

We just like her to work a little faster on our grand caramel latte. Terrible. Terrible. New Rule, if you're selling a handbag online, there are two things that can be. New and fake, or real, but used, so not in great shape.

There's no such thing as a gently loved handbag. Heath Ledger and Brokeback Mountain was gently loved. This, my friend, is a second-hand purse. New Rule, humans have to explain how they'll drop whatever it is they're doing to band together and spend hours in a desperate fight to return a beached whale to the sea, but then they'll walk by this guy like

get a job loser. New rule, if the salesman spends an hour telling me how reliable the car is, the manager can't spend an hour on how I need an extra warranty. You mean for my great new car that's also a piece of shit? New rule, since the trophy

for Russia's teacher of the year looks like a dick. The award for best porn movie must look like a book. And you can see by the look on that teacher's face that a dick-shaped award makes its recipient very happy. Especially when she said, I know exactly where I'm going to put it. And finally, new rule, power is like owning rabbits.

The more you have, the easier it is to get a lot more. That's actually not a new rule. It's a rule as old as time, and it was my theme in this space two years ago when another Supreme Court vacancy was in the news. And that theme, that power begets power, should be on everyone's mind right now, the idea that when you lose power,

you've not only lost that fight, you made it harder to win the next one. That's how power works. When Democrats lose elections, they lose the ability to appoint judges. Trump has appointed a quarter of the entire federal bench, and unlike his wives, that's for life.

In Florida, the people voted to restore voting rights to ex-felons, but that's not really going to happen because Trump appointed five of the six appeals judges who found a way to undo that, and as is so often the case, make it harder for Democrats

to vote, which means more Republican senators who appoint more conservative judges. Power is a perpetuating cycle, like when Terminators build more robots. Of course, Democrats are screaming now about Republican Hippolyt

over Trump filling the Ginsburg seat in an election year, they said one thing when it was Obama, now they're saying the complete opposite. How do they sleep at night? I'll tell you how, like a baby. Because like a baby, like a baby, they have no morals. And if you haven't gotten it yet,

this kind of completely bald-faced, premeditated hypocrisy should make it clear. There's no catching them in an inconsistency. They don't care because it's all at only about power. The only rule Republicans play by the only rule they play by

is the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk. Nancy Pelosi's response to stopping Trump getting a third seat on the court was, quote, we have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss. Great. Now the Democrats are bringing arrows to a

gunfight. But I don't think have any arrows in our quiver. I think our quiver is bare. They have the power, and they're going to use it to make a court with six conservatives. And when the 2020 election winds up in the lap of that court, as they're practically already promising

it will, guess who wins? We can't stop them from getting the court seat, which means we can't stop them from picking the election winner. It's like being in an arm wrestling contest. You can come back from here. it's almost impossible

to come back from here. How different it all could have been not to re-litigate old wounds but all the Hillary equivocators from 2016 the people who said she was racist not really that different from Trump

the ones who voted third party the ones who stayed home because, you know, the lesser of two evils. Sorry, but you all have to eat it one more time. Because, oh, how I would love me some of that Hillary evil right now. You know, the evil where liberals would currently have a six to three majority on the court, the evil where people wouldn't be facing having their health care taken away,

or their right to vote, or where America wasn't sliding into autocracy. Yes, yes. Let's look at the alternative universe. if a few more people in 2016 had told themselves, yeah, she's not my favorite, but you only get two choices in our system. It's probably better to make sure this sane, competent person gets in

as opposed to a malignant narcissist. In that universe, we're still in the Paris Climate Accord, and Iran's nuclear program is still frozen, and maybe so is Greenland. There have been none of the rollbacks on clean air and water, dreamers, don't have to worry about getting tossed out of the only country they've ever known. William Barr is just a right-wing crank, self-publishing a book on our moral decline.

And Brett Kavanaugh is drinking from home. Oh, it's a wonderful world, this world. People hearing the words, pee tape, only think of R. Kelly. And no one has needed or heard of a pink pussy hat, let alone try to knit one. And look, no nationa. as fundamentally unhealthy as this one could escape a pandemic unscathed, but I think Hillary would have done a little better than let them drink bleach. So the Supreme Court hears oral arguments to overturn Obamacare on November 10th.

Once this new justice is seated, Obamacare is likely gone. And after that, Roe v. Wade. So I hope you enjoy carrying your rape baby to term. You can name it Jill Stein. Yes, Joe Biden is far from a perfect. candidate and I have serious doubts they'll ever let him take office. But giving him a vote total so huge

it will be hard to ignore is the very last Hail Mary pass we have. All right, that's our show. Have a great week off. We're off next week. Nothing going on in the world. We'll be back October 9th. I want to thank my guest, Bukari Sellers, Coleman Hughes,

Jim Belushi, and Bernie Sanders and you. Thank you so much folks. Thank you guys. real time with Bill Marr every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.