Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #546: Ben Sheehan, Matthew McConaughey

Episode Date: October 24, 2020

Bill’s guests are Ben Sheehan, Matthew McConaughey, Heidi Heitkamp and Anthony Scaramucci. (Originally aired 10/23/20) 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. Thank you. Oh, please. I appreciate it. Thank you. Doing all the protocols. Thank you. I know you. I hope you're excited. It's 11 days till the election of you. Eleven days. I think the country is focused on one thing. Jeffrey Dubin jerked off on Zoom. Did you see that? No? Okay, well, let me tell you what happened then. Jeffrey Toobin, he's a big CNN analyst. He's like, the legal guy, the Supreme Court said this was whacking

during a Zoom meeting in front of his colleagues. You're grossed out. Jesus Christ, he's been a guest on the show. I had to shake his hand. So many gross things this week. Trump, did you see this? Trump, unbelievable. Turns out has a secret Chinese bank account,

and he's paid $200,000. taxes there. I was absolutely shocked. Trump paid taxes? Well, he's always said I pay taxes. It just wasn't in this country. Did you watch the debate last night? We finally had another...

Oh, you did. Oh. I mean, was it just me, my TV? It looks like the color of Trump's head was, even for him. He looked like roast beef. It was like Biden was debating Arby's. It was disconcerting.

But we did last night, we discovered the monster's weakness. The mute button. The mute button. Just the threat of it kept Trump in check. It was like fire to Frankenstein or garlic to Rudy Giuliani. Oh, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, there's a new Borat movie. I think it starts tomorrow.

Rudy Giuliani's in it because it's an actress, you know, part of the Borat troupe there. She's posing as a conservative reporter luring Rudy up to his hotel room, which she does. And he's lying there on the bed while she flirt with him, and he's got his hand reaching into his trousers.

Now, Rudy says, it's not what it looks like. Not what it looks like. It looks like an alien autopsy is what it looks like. But this, I love this, because it comes on the heels of last week Rudy was in the news because he was digging up dirt on Hunter Biden after, of course, the whole Ukraine thing where he was digging up dirt on Joe Biden. Because that's who you want looking into high-tech corruption in the former Soviet Union,

someone who can get fooled by Borat. Now, Rudy denies the whole thing. He claims he was tucking in his shirt. And Jeffrey Toobin said, could I use that? Now, Rudy, what a piece of work. He claims he works for Trump for free. It never takes any money. He says his only compensation is he gets to eat the flies that land on Mike Pence.

That's the only... Oh, and finally, listen to this, the Pope. Every once in a while the Lord, the Pope comes through. He came out in favor of civil unions for gay couples, which is pretty... For the Pope. All I have to say is, who's the lucky cardinal? All right, we got a great show.

Heidi Hyde Kemp and Anthony Scaramucci are here, and a little later we'll be speaking with Matthew McConaughey. But first up, he is the author of OMG. What the fuck does the... Well, WTF, does the Constitution actually say a non-boring guide to how our democracy is supposed to work? Ben Sheehan. Ben, don't you get near me, Ben.

I alone, I promise. No, I'm just kidding. So, listen, I'm so glad you're here, and I really mispronounced it. I said, OMG, and then I went right to what the fuck, but it's WTF. And those letters don't even really correspond to what we think they are, although it works both ways.

Obviously, oh my God, what the fuck. But it's also Ohio, Michigan, Georgia. Wisconsin, Texas, Florida. Because those are the key states, right? You go. Okay. So we have a lot in common theme-wise. We've both been on and on for the long time.

I have anyway. I don't know. About this problem we have in America, that you are such the perfect guest to walk us through, which is we're on the honor system. So much that we depend on has not actually been written down in law or the Constitution. And now we have someone who has no honor. Puts his family in office, gets help from foreign countries, runs a business empire while he's president,

things we didn't think we had to write down. Right. So my worry now is that the electoral college, it's not actually written down that the electors, which really elect the president, go to the guy who gets the most votes in the state. Right. I mean, to start, you only have, you know, you have 17 states that don't bind their electors, including states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and Texas. Meaning bind. Meaning make them follow the popular vote in the state. So that's one thing that's not written down.

They leave it up to the states, and that's what the Supreme Court decision earlier this year said that it is constitutional to have faithless elector laws and also for states to decide not to have that. But so much of the electoral college is set in the Constitution, but a lot of the actual process that's going to happen over the next two months is set by federal law, and even the federal law that describes it,

people could barely understand. This Section 15, written in 1887, is constantly debated. It's almost unintelligible. And so my worry is if we get to this point where we have the electoral count that happens on January 6th, there's going to be disputes

and it could go haywire. What is the likelihood, though, that some state, at least one state, does not send to the electoral college to meet, to actually elect the president, does not send electors that represent who won that state? You think that's a high possibility?

I don't think it's a high probability, but I've thought a lot of things over the last four years didn't have a high probability that ended up happening. Well, one thing we know for sure. The one thing we know for sure is that however much Trump loses by, look, I was not sanguine last time and I'm not this time, but this time, you know, last time I did not predict he would win. He would lose.

This time I'm saying he will lose, but that's just the popular vote and probably the electoral college. What I know will not happen is the next day Donald Trump saying, I congratulate Joe Biden, and I've instructed my staff to make a smooth transition, the best man won, and this is our system. That will never happen.

Right? No, who won't. That will not happen. So, he'll lose big and then go apeshit about that, is my prediction. What will apeshit entail? Well, my worry is less that his apeshit and more of the people who are around him

who know the system. Because what's going to happen over the next few weeks is you have obviously the election on November 3rd, but then you have until December 8th, if there's a controversy in a state or there's a recount or claims of mail voter fraud or whatever it is, there is this opportunity for states to choose, to decide a different way

to appoint the electors. And as long as they act on it by December 8th, they could make it go differently from the popular vote. So we have to pay attention to our state legislators in that period to make sure that they follow the popular vote in the state so that we don't have a popular vote in the state, that's different from the electorate.

So make a prediction for me, I don't think the election will be decided November 3rd. I don't either. You don't either. No. Give me a predicted date that you think somebody will make a call. I hope it's on, I'll say after the safe harbor date,

which is the one I just described, so I'll say December 9th. December 9th. Because between November 3rd and December 9th, they're recounting. December 8th, they could. Court? Is it going to courts?

think a lot? I mean, it could. I mean, I think that in a state like Texas or a state like Georgia, you know, because they don't bind their electors, like there is that wiggle room for it to go haywire. So, so what happens on December 9th? Do you think somebody will call it for Biden? Well, the electors will have to be finalized on that date if they choose a different method. So we'll know by December 9th and then the actual vote is on the 14th and then the actual counting of the electoral votes is on January 6th and Mike Pence is overseeing that. Yeah, but he can't do anything about it.

But again, the law is super unclear from 1887. So, you know, if it got really close and it's not a Biden blowout, then you could have some complication that happens at that meeting. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it's important to know where the guardrails are versus the... So what... Okay, so say things go Biden's way in December 9th, they declare he's the winner. But Trump is not going to accept that.

No. Right. So what happens between December 9th and January 20th when he's supposed to leave? I mean, I've heard Joe Biden say, you know, the United States government is perfect. equipped to escort a trespasser out of the White House. Except at that moment, he's the government. Right.

That's the problem. He's still the government until he says different. Yeah. I mean, it is, we've never had a situation. We've gotten close. We had a situation in 1876 where it got two days before inauguration, and they were literally planning parallel inaugurations. They finally ended up having the winner, Rutherford B. Hayes,

win by one electoral vote. But we've never had a situation where it's gotten. to inauguration day and the person has refused to leave. So how do we fix this in the future? I mean, a constitutional amendment takes two-thirds, right, of the... Two-thirds of the House and the Senate to propose it. Both the House and the Senate.

So supermajorities in both. That's a lot. That's 67%, which never happens for anything we can't agree on. Plus three-fourths of the states? Three-fourths of the states. So you need 38 states to ratify it. It sounds to me like we could never really have a constitutional. constitutional amendment again, that that is not really going to happen? Well, there are two ways to work around this with the Electoral College.

So one is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And right now you have 15 states that have signed on for a total of 196 electors. So that's not going to happen. You're not going to get enough states to tip the balance to 270 by this election, but you could in the future. The other state, the other thing that you could do in the future is have states not give win or take all electoral votes. Because right now you have states that are just guaranteed to go blue and it doesn't, you know, the people who aren't voting for the, you know, people who are voting Republican in California,

their vote for president isn't really going to matter. So you could switch it where every state has the ability tomorrow if they want it to change their laws so that it's proportional rather than winner-take-all. All right, well, I'll be praying with you, man. Just kidding. All right, thanks very much, Ben. Let's meet our panel.

Good job. How you doing? Good. All right. Good to see everybody very distance. Anthony, how you doing? Okay, he is the former White House communication director under President Trump and host of the podcast,

Salt Talks on Salt.org. Anthony Scaramucci is over here. Now he gets a big round of applause. Okay, she's the former Democratic senator from North... Not an easy thing, a Democratic senator from North Dakota. Pretty good. And co-founder of the organization One Country Project, Heidi Hydecamp is back with us.

Great to see you. Okay, so... There's so much going to... On, there's so many of the week's stories I could go into, and I probably should, but you know what, I'm at the end of my robe. It's the end of the year. I'm just going to talk about what I want to talk about. Not that I don't

really do that every week, anyway. But here's the thing. I was watching 60 minutes Sunday. And there's this story on the flight from hell. Have you seen this story? Let me tell the people what it is, because they don't know what I'm talking about. But the question I want to get to was, why can't America

get its shit together anymore? Here's what happened. In March, 200 Americans, right when the pandemic was starting, and we'd been talking about it for months. 20 Americans get on a cruise ship. So right away I'm at, Americans are morons. Okay.

So they get on the coastal lumenusa, which cut to it's a petri dish. Of course. So then the State Department has to get them off the ship, sends a chartered plane to get back to Atlanta because that's where the CDC is.

The plane, it's of course, the flight from hell. People are literally passing out in the aisles. Everyone on the plane's got the... So it lands and they radio the tower and they say, nobody told us you were coming. And sits on the tower mark for

three hours. Then they let him in. Check them a little bit. Dispersed them out to the busiest airport in the world. Hit the food court. Get your connecting flights. I mean, you couldn't design a system better to super spread this disease into America.

Why are we such a loser country now? What is it with the people of this country? Are they stoned? Are they stupid? Are they disillusioned? Is it all three? You couldn't communicate the plane was coming in, and you let them all out?

I mean, why are we such a loser? I requested Vaca. I just want to make sure, is there Vaca in here? I mean, you're a Wall Street superstar. What do you think? I mean, Bill, I mean, there's fragmentation of information. You've got people politicizing masks. The president is politicizing. He tried to make it into not big of, that big of a deal.

You've got 40 to 50% of the people. I'm not, I'm asking about the people of a minute. Why the people on the ground can't? Somebody told them this plane's coming in. Nobody can, how did that message not get through? I'm talking about basic shit. You can make all those political arguments. It's fundamental. They would just ignore. Incompetence. It's incompetence. Not on the people on the ground. It's fundamentally incompetent of the State Department. What the hell was the State Department? doing. Everybody should remember this when Pompeo offers himself up

to America to be the next president of the United States. He's been incompetence since day one. This whole thing has been mismanaged since day one. Shouldn't surprise anyone. I mean, Trump, of course, had... The personal beliefs of those people are, is to ignore stuff like that.

That's just a fact. Personal beliefs of who? Whoever it is, the air traffic controller, the people that were bringing the flight in. I mean, just don't believe it. It's not about it. It's not up to... Being believed. This is information. This plane is coming in with these sick passengers. Be ready for it. Handle it like they would in a normal country. Something is wrong that's beyond Trump.

There's no question. There's a systemic imbalance. I was in Africa during Ebola, and they tested you more heavily in Africa when you came in their country and left their country in the developing world. He has never taken this seriously. and to stop people and test people, that means you're failing. And he would never... It's personal for him. It's personal for the president.

Once again, his fuck-ups, not in dispute. But somebody's going to have to answer this question about America at large also. Because it wasn't up to him to just be on the ground and at the CDC and the airlines and all this shit. People are just fucking dumb. He's the biggest domino, Bill. He's the biggest domino. He's the biggest domino tipping into everything else. Yes.

but it's a danger to just blame everything on that and not look at this. There's no question. We have a system fight. Maybe this will convince you. 25% of all Americans now believe Q, QAnon. I mean, it was only two years ago when I first made fun of it,

and we were like, oh, this is hysterical. I'll say I am Q. I am. Because it's such a fringe thing. And now it's not a fringe thing. It's 25%. There's going to be Congresspeople who are QAnon. If you don't know what QAnon is,

here's the question that 25% of Americans agreed to. And by the way, another 24% not sure, maybe. They said to the question, do you believe top Democrats are involved in elite child sex trafficking rings? This is the Hillary ran a pedophile

ring out of a pizza parlor. 25% of Americans, another 24% not sure that that might be true. Biden has to run for office factoring in that a good part of the populist thinks he's a pedophile. Discuss. Okay, so the main thing about that is there's a lot of disenfranchised people. They feel the system has not worked for them.

They can't blame themselves. And so they buy into conspiracy theory. And then you have another group of people that are praying on them. And one of them is to be the President of the United States. And so he lights people up. He's retweeting things about the bin Laden. So they think that you're saying that people think to fix. is in? That the system is rigged. Why do rich people get richer?

Exactly. Prince Andrew. He, come on. He is on Sex Island. Rich people do get whatever the one. The president's throwing dirt flame logs on it. He's retweeting false bin Laden raid conspiracies. And he's retweeting Q&ON. And then he says that he denies it. And there's good 25% of the people that went from economically aspirational as blue-collar people to economically desperation. Right. about three decades, and they get ignited by it, Bill. I mean, I disagree.

I think that if you had had the internet when I was a kid, instead of reaching for the inquire and reading about aliens or reading about some craziness, maybe only 5% of the people saw that story, now 25% of the people are seeing the story. There are some people who just do not have the ability to use critical thinking, and that's the bigger problem in this country. You can talk about whether there's...

disenfranchised, it doesn't, being poor doesn't make you stupid, right? Being poor doesn't, doesn't get you in that spot. Being rich makes you stupid a lot more often. That's true. No, really, rich people don't have to think, right, because they're rich. To me, critical thinking is what we really have to focus on. And also, how is it that... But you're entering my first question now about why we fucked up so bad with the cost of a virus ship. Well, but think about this. We don't educate anymore. We don't think anymore.

We don't have critical. Right. This is the answer. Yeah. No. But on the virus, and I will stand up for the people at the air traffic control or the people at the, if they were not told, here's your protocol when they come off. And that was the state department's responsibility. You saw those lineups.

Remember when we brought the planes back from Europe? And there were people jammed waiting to get through customs, and they weren't even tested then? So never mind that experience, we continue that experience all along. That's how we spread the virus in this country. And to simply say, oh, we shut down the Chinese. No, you didn't. You brought people in here who were contaminated and tested positive but never tested them. But if a quarter of the country and half of Trump people think that the Democrats are pedophiles and Satanists by they're also Satanists.

And also they believe in lizard people. Drinking blood. Right. eating babies? I mean, like, you couldn't, the inquiry... John Kennedy's still alive, though. That's the good news. Right? So is JFK Jr. That's what I bet. J.F.K.

Jr.'s. Right. Okay. So, I mean, if Biden wins, what are we going to do with these people? And if Trump wins, what are they going to do to us? Because they believe in the storm, you know, which is a moment when everyone realizes all this stuff, and then they arrest 100,000 people. Well, I'll be definitely

in an in-disclosed location. Hopefully you'll let me zoom into the show. I don't think those are the dangerous people. I mean, I know stupidity is a cancer on our society. But many of them is not dangerous? You know who the dangerous people are. Who? The people who stood in the state house in Michigan.

The people who plotted to... You don't think these are the same people? No, I don't. You don't. You don't think those are cute people? No, I don't. I think those are militia. Those are posse comitatis.

Those are people. And they're not, there's no bin diagram, I'm sure there's some cross-pollination, but you've got to remember that these groups, no one, these groups are not all monolithic. Right. You've got to look at what their belief system is. And the poor boys, I mean, they're basically misogynistic. You know, people say they're racist.

No, they don't like women. And that should worry us to them. What about the willing accomplices like McConnell and McCarthy and guys that know better cotton? All these guys know better. and they sit there as willing accomplices to all of this nonsense, feeding it day in and day out. They're the most dangerous, because they're smarter, and they're using that system to manipulate people.

All right. Well, listen, masturbation is in the news this week. Not that I have to tell you. I feel bad about constantly making fun of Jeffrey Tubin, but, you know, when you do what he did, you know, people are going to make fun, especially comedians. Okay. And I just say the name, Tubin, to me, it really lends itself. It's like a... You know, because I think it will probably be a word in itself in the future,

meaning to masturbate during a Zoom meeting. As in, that meeting was so boring, I was tubin the whole time. So, wait a minute's... So I realize, you know, every year in the dictionary, they put out, like, the list of new words that are neologism, they call it, new words that come into the language. And with this year in COVID, there's going to be a whole list that are just related to pandemic living,

like tubin. And we found some of the other ones, like the practice of bumping elbows instead of shaking hands is funny-boning. You see? That's... What shoppers experience when they actually find Clorax wipes is called a storgasm. That's going to be... Someone during a COVID test who says,

let me do it myself and gets the Q-tip stuck in his nose. That's a nostril dumbass. That's a new one that will be. Oh, getting airlifted to a hospital for treatment unavailable, the public, that's called wealth care. When you're scared to even think about how long you've been wearing the same underwear, those are Friday Whitties. And when a wife gets so drunk on her Zoom happy hour, she even has sex with her husband,

that's a shardin-lay. Okay. So, did you watch the debates, both of you last night? I thought Trump showed me, at least he can modulate. when he must be very scared because he usually doesn't but he was trying and he there was parts of it that looked almost like a normal

debate I had this little glimmer of nostalgia like when they talk about minimum wage it was just like a normal the Republican said that rap that they boys had about well it's going to cost small businesses and you know the people get fired and the Democrats said the Democrat shit

I was like oh this is so normal and then I was reading this thing today the Ludwig Institute says the real unemployment rate is 26.1. It's listed as 7.9. Because if you take everybody who has a part-time job or wants a full-time job, everybody who has no job and everyone who's just given up, 26.1, that's what it

was in the Depression. That's the real unemployment in America. What are the repercussions of that? What's the remedy for that? Well, I think the repercussions are that all of a sudden you're going to see a spiral downward that you won't be able to contain, which is why getting this stimulus package is absolutely essential as soon as possible. There is no way we can recover without increase in federal investment. But beyond that, it has shown the fault lines in our democracy, the inequality. I could give you a number that overlays that, that basically shows that the bottom quartile

are going to spend that much more time recovering. And as the rich people, who are the stock markets just fine for them, they can zoom from home. They're doing okay. They're going to continue to get wealthier and wealthier. And those poor folks at the bottom never catch up. We need systemic capitalism reform in this country to stop what's happening right now. Please say to that, Mr. Wall Street. Well, I would say three things of that.

The Wall Street's getting its bailout. That's the narcotic of the Federal Reserve and the modern monetary theory of just continue to print money. Wall Street loves these COVID bailouts because they get the money. They get the money. But the second to everything that's happening is you do have a safety net today that's different from the 2933

depression. So you have workers' compensation, you have unemployment insurance, you have a safety net. We need to expand that safety net, frankly. Whether you're a capitalist or a socialist, it really doesn't matter. We have to help those people. Because if you don't do that, you're going to break down the social contract in the system.

And I think the senator is ultimately very right about this, that it's going to take a very long time for people that have got hurt in this thing to pull out of it. And so things like Andrew Yang's universal base income, we have to look at that because the top-down structure bill is not working. You know, funneling it through the Federal Reserve into the stock market, having the president champion that as his poll number is not working because you've got 45 percent of the people that are really devastated right now. Yeah. And every low wage worker in America is a subsidy to their employer. Is that, you know, when you talk about we need this program or that program, guess what?

You need to pay these folks more. You need to give them real economic opportunity. And so when you say, we're going to do this and do that and provide the earned income tax credit or universal income, guess what? That's a subsidy to people who are hiring people at 725 and making millions of dollars themselves. How do people live? They don't. They don't.

They live with how much. housing assistance, they live on food stamps, they live on Medicaid, and the president's trying to take that way, working people's health insurance. I mean, it's an atrocity, and no wonder people are mad. They just have to get to the polls and vote. Vote their end. But it doesn't... But will it really change? That's the thing. I mean, here's the thing. The money that we already spent, I mean, the 2.3 trillion was the first COVID relief, right?

Okay, that's an astounding number. I mean, even TARP, we were like, oh, my, that was the 2008, was like $780 billion, and people were like, oh, my God, in one swift stroke. And we went to 2.2. The new deal, all told, cost $856 billion, adjusted. The Marshall Plan was $144 billion. I mean, we are into some crazy numbers, and it doesn't get to the people.

This is our fundamental problem, besides stupidity. greed and that every snout is in the trough, only 20% only 20% went for relief and families. It went to fucking Wall Street, $250 billion in tax rates went to businesses, some of which were making more profits

during the pandemic. You left out big tech, you know, because it's all slanting towards them because if you look at their... That too. Yeah. The Pentagon got a billion to prevent, prepare, and respond to coronavirus. They spent it on

space surveillance, jet engines, and dress uniforms. Well, just not to send you off the edge here, but North Dakota just took their COVID relief money and they're giving it to people so that they can frack. Frack? That is fucking ridiculous. They took COVID money and gave it to fracking? Yeah.

They're doing that right now. Listen to this one. A gas station in needles. I think that's Arizona. received $150,000 through the Paycheck Protection Program. They spent it on Trump billboards. You know, how can we even

get behind spending money when we know it's not going to go where it's supposed to go? Well, that's my point. You could digitize the money and drop it in everybody's bank account and it's very clean, administratively clean. But you've got lobbyists and you've got politicians that are standing in the way and you've got very few politicians

that will look into a camera and explain explain it directly to the American people. Ross Perrault was right all those years ago. Wasn't he? He had the right issues. Debt and you got to kill K Street. Right? Well, you have the crazy, what was it, his aunt in the basement?

Yeah, no, and then he became like a, he was not a great politician, but yeah, it's, he was pretty, it's not a swamp bill. It's a gold-plated hot tub without a drain, and they're sitting in there smoking. So, so, but think about this, though. But think about this. and then all the hand-wringing from people like Lindsey Graham about,

you can't get that extra $600 a week if you're on unemployment. Who do you think is going to spend money in this economy? 70% of our economy is consumption. If you don't get the money in the hands of the people who need things, you are not going to recover. And so the hand-wringing was atrocious, absolutely atrocious, that people so concerned that someone's going to get $600, and then they wouldn't work for minimum wage.

They won't go back to a minimum-wage job. pay them more. Pay them the $600 more a month. There. So what are Americans, what are the citizens going to do if Trump doesn't leave or puts up a big fight? Or if he wins by voter suppression? That's how dictators around the world stay in office. They have elections.

They just rigged them. He's going, Bill. I'll take the other side of that bet. This guy is a coward. He's a keyboard warrior coward. He's never had a direct confrontation with anybody in his life. Even when Chris Wallace was interviewing him in the summer, he put up the tweets of Chris Wallace, he started, you know, kissing his ass. Okay, he is a keyboard warrior coward, and he is going. He's going to get routed.

Okay, in the next 11 days, which is a scaramucci, I might add. He's going to get destroyed. You've got 55 million people. Eleven days, because that's how long you had that job? Just one longer than my last name in terms of 11. So now we're calling that a scarimooch. We're calling that a skirmucci. Like a fortnight. A fortnight is two weeks, and the scaramucci is 11 days. I'm wishing.

Don't take a weak vacation. Take a scaramucci. You'll get on me. All right. But he's going. He's going. He's going to get routed. Well, he's going to get routed.

I don't know if he's going. He's not going to go easily. He's not kicking and screaming. You need the military. You want to turn a democracy into an autocracy. You need the military. He's the most hated commander-in-chief in the modern era. No retired general or active duty officer likes this guy.

And go look at the enlisted men and women. They dislike him. I hope you're right. But over the years, let's be honest. He's been awful to so many people who somehow stayed loyal to him among them you. Because he was in power.

Well, also, I was a lifelong Republican, and I thought it was my duty to try to stay loyal. So was a lot of people in the military, like long Republicans. I understand that bill. And he's the commander in chief at that moment. Even if they hate him, if he's like, well, I'm your commander in chief, and I say, I'm still the president

because there's irregularities. Okay, well, I'm here on your show to help those people with an off-ramp to get to reality and to where our democracy needs to be and it's not him and he's got to go. I hope so. And we'll work entirely. But I just would like to know

if you think that American citizens are capable of a general strike like they have in France too much in France. Always. Every time I've been in France, they're on strike. I cannot get it baguette. You know, it's like they're either on vacation

and they're on strike. But I mean, the whole country, If they don't like something, the whole country just says, well, we're all stopping. Would America do that? You just said that the COVID plane got, I mean, we don't have that. I mean, stopping on purpose. I understand that, but we don't have that kind of community. We're so disparate in our country. I don't know if you could unify us like that.

If what? So disparate. I don't know if you can unify us where everybody just universally goes on strike like they do in France. No, but I think a good 60% of the country wants Trump to go. and we might find out it's more than that. But that's a lot of people if they got in the streets.

You know, I mean, we had, well, after he was elected, we had the pussy riot. No. Pussy riot. The pussy hats. Yeah. The women's March.

The women's March. The women's march, right. Pussy riots that banned in Russia. Pussy hat is what they had. A pussy hat. And it wasn't a riot. Other than that, I'm fine.

But, you know, it lasted a few days and everybody went home. That is not. Not fair at those. No, I applaud them. I wasn't there at all. They went and then they started organizing. And let me tell you, in the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote, guess what's going to happen?

Women started this movement the day after the inaugural, and they're going to end it on Election Day and his ass is going out. All right. We'll end on that positive note. He is the Oscar and Golden Globe Award winning actor whose new book is called Green Lights. Matthew McConaughey. Hey. Hey, how you doing, Dale? Good to see it.

Thank you for having. How you doing? Thank you for doing this. Your book is fascinating. I tell you, for a guy who for so long was known as, you know, a beach bum who didn't own a shirt, you're a very deep guy.

You really are. So why don't you just start off by telling people what that title means because I think it's so important to the book. Yeah, so I've been keeping a diary for 36 years, and I finally got the courage take those diaries away to go see what they were. What I found in 36 years of writings were stories, people, places, prescribes, poems, prayers,

and a whole lot of bumper stickers. Then I looked at those, and I found this central theme of green lights. I found that I had caught green lights in my life. Green lights are things that we like. They give us freedom. They say go. They affirm our way. I found that I had created a lot of those in my life by choices I made.

I found that in a lot of ways they were thrown in my lap, and I got very fortunate and lucky and did good things. with them. I also found that a lot of the yellow and red lights in my life, crises, hardships, death of my father, years abroad where I was lost, had green light assets in them that revealed themselves later in life. Now, when we realize that there's a green light asset in a red or yellow light in our life is sort of relative. Sometimes we notice it in the moment. Sometimes we notice it next week, next week, sometimes we notice it on our deathbed. But I do believe that eventually in the rearview mirror life, all the green, all the yellow and red lights do eventually turn green.

Boy, you got that down. Yeah, and I mean, so much of the book, honestly, you remember that old Dosecchi, maybe it's still on commercial, the most interesting man in the world? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so many of the passages are like copy for the next most interesting man in the world. He smoked peyote in Mexico in a cage with a mountain lion.

Yes. You did that. You were blackmailed into having sex at 15. How does that even happen? I would have been the blackmailer at 15. Do you want to tell that story? As I wrote in the book, and I didn't give a whole lot of details on that, I was raised thinking I wasn't going to lose my virginity until I was married,

and at least if I did, it was going to be with someone that I had a really good relationship with. Well, neither of those happened. This girl was much older. And as I write in the book, I said, I was very sure at the time that I was going to hell for the act. And now I merely hope that that is not the case. I'm really sure that I hope that's not the case. Yes, you are a philosopher. That's the interesting part.

And you did something in your career that is very rare, which is you change the perception of yourself. That's the hardest thing to do in show business. You know, when you gets a label on you, it sticks. And you manage to find a way to not be the beach bum with the shirt off, you know, to be this guy. You want to tell the kid how to do that? Well, what happened was

I was the rom-com guy, I was the shirtless guy on the beach. That was fine. Yes, I said it then and I'll say it now. Those rom-coms I was doing were paying the rent for the houses on the beach where I was shirtless. Guilty fact, yes, right, thank you.

So I never, you know, Pallyhooed that part. But I did notice that that's all that I was in the public guy, and that's all I was to studio finances in Hollywood. Other roles I wanted to do, dramatic roles, they were not being offered. They were not an option for me. So at a time where I said,

if I can't do what I want to do, I'm going to stop doing what I've been doing, it was a scary proposition. So I checked with my wife, check with my money manager and agent and said, I'm going to stop doing rom-coms. Well, guess what? Okay, that's all that came in for six months.

I got a $14.5 million offer for one, and that was harder to say no to. because I got a little relative on that going, really? You're going to send no to this, which I finally did? And then for 14 months after that, nothing came in. Call my agent and he goes, no, no one's even mentioned your name. So a 20-month sabbatical, after 20 months of a sabbatical from Hollywood, being gone, not seeing me shirtless on the beach,

not seeing me in your living room or in a theater in a rom-com, I became a new good idea. Where's McConaughey been? We forgot about it. Well, guess who's a good idea now for Lincoln Lawyer, Killer Joe, Paperboy, Mud, True Detective, Dallas Firestack, Magic Mike. Right. And I just...

So that movie, that one you turned down for 14.5, what was it and who did it? I'm not telling, and it didn't get made. Okay. All right. So the other reason I think you were able to do it is you just have an innate likability, which is rare, but, you know, usually carries the day. it's interesting. You talk about your big breakthrough,

time to kill. The other guy who was up for it was the other actor, I think, in your generation, who has the only one who has the same amount of likability, which is our friend. My brother from another mother? Brother from another mother. Well, you know, you're both sons of Texas.

You have this weird family history, which I'll get into in a minute. But you sure he's not your real brother? It's still debatable. We're still fine at it. My mom's got a story that makes us both think, we just might be related.

Well, yeah, let's just leave that hanging out there. Because this is so interesting. You were born to parents who were each on their third marriage to each other. I heard of people getting married twice. In fact, I googled it. It's interesting.

Lots of really prominent, interesting, good people. Larry King, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Eminem did it. Richard Pryor did it. Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith did it. Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. Judge fucking Judy did it. Overruled herself and married this.

Twice. But your parents did it three times. You were married after this. So how do you think that affected you? Great question. Let me throw this at you. Camilla, who I'm now married to, her parents did the inverse of what mine did.

they were married twice, divorced three times. They ended up divorced. So we came into this going, hey, this whole marriage thing that our parents had, they, boy, they've been really good lessons of can't live with you, can't live without you. We're not rushing into this. Right. But, you know, my parents liked their relationship being a tidal wave in the Pacific Ocean.

I don't, I didn't, I didn't want to go marry someone like, as much like my mother, who needed that much resistance. continually to get along. I want to keep the passion, have a passion relationship, but I like more of a slow-moving river with some rapids along the way. So it really didn't scare us away from marriage,

but it made us take our time, maybe a little extra time before we decided, hey, this is what we want to do, and we want to choose each other to spend our lives together with. Well, it's interesting, you know, reading about your family, violence is a big theme in your book.

Violence followed by love. You know, you talk about, you know, you love your father very much, but he whipped your ass, and that there's a, you describe a fight in the kitchen between your mother and your father, like a bar fight with a knife in a broken bottle, and they wind up fucking on the floor. I mean, you talk about defending your father at a bar, and he loved you for it because you got the shit beat out of you. There's a lot, and then you have these dreams,

this recurring dreams where you're surrounded by the most violent creatures in nature, the shark, right, the python. the crocodile, and then you come. It's a wet dream. Just got it. Not a nightmare. Well, everything you just said, look at what the outcome of each one of those was.

They end up with love winning. My mom and dad get in a fight, they end up making love on the floor. My mom and dad get divorced twice. They end up being married. I have dreams that have the elements of absolute nightmares by any practical look at it, and they end up being a wet dream.

The love in our family and the violent that was in our family. And trust me, there was a much, much more compassion and good times and hugging and all of it getting along. I tell these stories about our family that had to do with consequences and have some violence in them because those were the times where the love that we have was tested the most, but was never going to get beat. So I think that's why I adore these stories and tell them as love stories so much because there are times when that love got tested. But the love is never going to be in question. The love was never going to lose the fight.

And it never did. Okay. Well, listen, I'm looking forward to your third act whenever that's going to start, because I know you're a seeker, and it'll be something different still. Thank you for doing this. Keep Austin Weird. We'll do it.

Bill, Mr. McKeate. Okay, now it's time for new rules, everybody. New rules. Okay. New rule. If you buy this silicone face slimmer designed to stretch the mouth muscles thereby slimming your face, you can't be surprised

when your husband leaves you for a blow-up doll. Sophisticated humor we do here. New Rule, never buy anything from an ad where a kid at breakfast says, Dad, you rock. If Dad actually rock, he'd be on tour doing blow and trashing hotel rooms. Here's how you know he doesn't rock.

It's 6 a.m. and he's cooking for you. New Rule, the media must trying to scare us with bullshit horror stories about marijuana, like this one. Man dies after pot plant liquefies his brain. Nice try, but where I come from, it'll liquefy your brain as a selling point. P.S. That's not even a pot plant, douchebags. New rule, the Zoom app has to change its name. Boy, this poor guy, we fucking hit him at the beginning, we hit him in the middle, and we hit him at the end.

The Zoom app has to change its name. to We Can See Your Penis. I realize that's a mouthful, but apparently some people need reminding that if there's one thing nobody likes seeing on their computer, it's unwanted pop-ups. New Rule, someone must tell harmonica players that the reason they always have the blues

is because nobody wants to watch someone play a harmonica. Because it sounds like you're auto-tuning an asthma attack. And finally, New Rule, an election is meant to eliminate candidates, not voters. Last week, Georgia, early voting in the wealthier white

neighborhoods in Atlanta took just 15 minutes, barely enough time for the poodle in the car to get hot. But voters in some black area stood in line for up to eight hours. In Texas, the governor decreed that there'd be only one ballot drop box per county,

which is fine for Loving County, population 169, but Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, and has 2.4 million eligible voters spread across an area. larger than Rhode Island, also got one box.

In some states, you have to put your mail-in ballot inside an envelope and then put that envelope into a second envelope and then sign the envelope. It's like you're doing a magic trick. For people who say both parties are basically the same, voter suppression is the stark example that that's not true.

This is 100% a Republican thing. They know their policies aren't as popular, so they came up with an effective, time-tested political tactic called cheating. I can't make you want to vote for me, but maybe I can keep you

from voting for the other guy. That's their credo. May the best man lose anyway. The other night I was watching one of those obstacle course shows, you know, the ones where a contestant has to get across a terrain of giant bouncy balls

and slippery balance beams and swing on friggin' ropes like Tarzan. It occurred to me while watching this, watching Ricardo lose his grip on a foam roller, that this is exactly what our voting system has turned into.

It's American Ninja Warrior Democracy Edition. Try to move forward without getting knocked off the voter rolls. Match your wits and physical prowess in our most challenging steeple chases like The Eliminator, where you show up to vote, only to find

your polling place has been closed. Splish-splash, you're taking a bath. Or then there's the excruciator where you finally find your polling place. But the line is hours long because they've shut down all the other polling

places and your precinct has been given the old broken voting machines. KERplunk. The misidentifier where you finally get to the front of that line that you've been waiting for hours. and they tell you that you have the wrong ID. Hope you can swim.

The monkey wrench, where you say, okay, fine, I'll mail in my ballot, only to find they remove the only mailbox in the neighborhood. Oh, no. And finally, brand new this year, try to stay dry when going up against the obstructor, where you say, fuck it, I'll just drop off my mail-in ballot

at a designated drop-off box only to find there's only one for 2.4 million people. It's amazing how brazen Republicans have become and owning voter suppression. Back in March when Democrats were pushing for a vote-by-mail same-day registration and early voting, Trump, because he's a poker player

who always tells you his hand, said this would result in, quote, levels of voting that if you'd ever agree, agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again. Well, not quite, but yes, more people vote for Democrats. A process known as counting. David Lewis is a state rep from North Carolina. He was tasked with redistricting, and he gave one of the most honest rationales

for partisan Jerry mandering you'll ever hear. He said, I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map in a way to help. Huh, well, it must have been such a relief for a cheater like that to stop pretending that there was a good reason for their cheating and just say it, like when Mom finally admits that the Hitachi Magic Wand isn't for her back. Well, here's my message to the cheaters. I've always preached on this show that you can hate Trump,

you can't hate his supporters. I meant it then, and I mean it now. But that goes out the window if you steal from me. My vote is a thing of value. You steal it? I do hate you. Because that's not... That's not we see the world differently.

Our politics are different. That's... You're a crook, a thief, and a schmuck. Elections are supposed to be free and fair, not wet and wild. And if you wait eight hours to vote, when you get out of the booth, you deserve to do this.

All right, that's our show. I want to thank my guest, Anthony Scaramucci, Heidi Hypecam, Matthew McCann. and Ben Sheehan will be back next week. Thank you very much, 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.