Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #549: Jenna Ellis, Caitlin Flanagan

Episode Date: November 14, 2020

Bill’s guests are Jenna Ellis, Caitlin Flanagan and Max Brooks. (Originally aired 11/13/20) 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, space people. Plenty of room in here. Plenty of room. Everybody do this. Do this.

See, you. Oh, I see. You're clapping. You can't do that. Thank you. I appreciate it. We are so far apart. No spread of the disease in here.

Right? We are safer than fuck in this place. That's our motto here. Anyway, we have one more show after this. We have this show. We haven't done this. Shit could happen now. And then one more, and then that's the end.

What a year. Boy, wow. Started with the flu, ending with a coup. It's been a... Oh, my God. I mean, people know this. You know, there's like five stages of grief after a loss. You know, everyone knows this.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I don't want to name names, but somebody seems stuck on the first two. Because this... This has been the most drawn-out transition since Caitlin Jenner. I mean, Trump. We thought he was a Russian plant. Turns out he's an Irish relative. Yeah, this guy reminds me of the...

Remember the movie The Sixth Sense? Remember that movie? The main character doesn't know he's dead. No, really. If this presidency was a... bar? It is way past closing time. We need that guy who goes, you don't have to go

home, but you can't stay here. But, you know, the president is making an interesting case for himself. He's saying he's uncovered a conspiracy, a widespread conspiracy involving tens of millions of Americans voting for his opponent.

Really? That's his case. His case is basically, if you don't count all those votes for Biden, I won by a landslide. That's, as much as I can glean. And also the will of the people, very unfair.

Very unfair. But don't never say these people don't try. I mean, the president has been sending out his say, Rudy Giuliani, p. That's a laugh itself, went to contest the vote in Pennsylvania. They said

it was going to be at the Four Seasons, Philadelphia. It was at a four-season in Philadelphia. It was at a four- Four seasons total landscaping. I'm not joking about it. I wish I was. This would make a great sketch. It was in a fucking Home Depot.

We was going to bring out witnesses to the fraud. One of the witnesses to the voter fraud that Giuliani brought out didn't even live in Pennsylvania and turned out to be a sex offender. Yeah. When they offered him the job of Poll Watcher, he thought they meant something completely different.

But don't think that just because all this is going on, the president has stopped presidenting because Wednesday was Veterans Day and Trump visited the tomb of the unknown soldier and accused him of voting illegally. All right. We got a great show. We have Caitlin Flanagan and Max Brooks.

But first up, she is a senior legal advisor for the Trump 2020 campaign. Please welcome warmly. Jenna Ellis. Thank you. Thank you, so thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.

Can I call you, Jenna? Absolutely. My friends all call me, Jenna. Okay, well, I hope we're friends. I hope we can have an honest conversation without, you know, talking points and stuff. I mean, first of all, I do admire you for coming on. This is a tough argument you have to make. Would you acknowledge that?

Well, I think that the argument we're making, and I appreciate you having me on, because what all Americans should be concerned about is that every legal, vote should count fairly inaccurately. And so this is about the future of our presidential elections. And you're agreeing with that. And I wish that Joe Biden was. I mean, right away, we used the talking point there, the, you know, legal vote. No one is contesting the idea that we are not wanting to count legal votes. That's really not what's going on. Okay. Joe Biden, his press conference last week, he said, let's count all votes. What he hasn't acknowledged is that he wants to count all legal votes. What he's wanting is the late ballots.

He's wanting all of these ballots from dead people, from non-residents, all of those. He has not come out and acknowledge every legal ballot. When I say, you know, welcome to the show. Please give a hand to my guests. I don't have to say, please give a hand to my guests who are sitting on the panel. We assume certain things. When someone says votes, we assume it means legal votes. But let me ask you, today the president was out talking about the coronavirus.

and he said, we're not going to talk about that, but in the middle of it, when he was talking about we're not going to be going into a lockdown, he said, hopefully, whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell. Okay, you talk to him on a daily basis.

You know his mindset. I have not heard this tone since Election Day. What he tweeted a few days before was, I won this election by a lot. This seems to be a different tone. Are you guys admitting that maybe you lost? I don't think it was a different tone at all. And I met with the president actually right before that press conference.

I was in the Oval Office. And again, he is wanting to make sure not just for his own election, but for every future election that we know that we have free and fair elections in this country. And so I think that he is acknowledging. We do know that. We don't actually. We don't know that. But we came out.

We don't know that. We have evidence, and we have lawsuits that are currently going on. We have recounts. Some recounts like in Georgia with the margin that is so close is actually a mandatory requirement. Your lawsuits are being laughed out of court. I mean, I'm sorry. I don't want to make this a contentious interview. Not all of them.

I'm just trying to present what is the truth in what's going on in the courts. And also in your own administration, the Department of, wait a minute, this came out today, the Department of Homeland Security. Now, this is going to sound, I mean, you work in government. you know now. Very bureaucratic. I actually don't. I actually don't.

I want to clarify that. I don't work for the White House. I work for the campaign and for the president directly. So all the people on Twitter who are saying, hey, you worked for me because I'm a taxpayer. Maybe they need to read my Twitter profile

a little more closely. Apologies. That's okay. Thanks. Department of Homeland Security. That is the government. Yes. Okay.

They have a branch called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. This is what I'm trying to say. it's getting very bureaucratic, but that's what government is. And by the way, that's one reason why we love government, why we're not a third world country quite yet, is because we have people in place who are people of goodwill from both parties who do a tough job,

as this election was, and they did it brilliantly. In the Department of Homeland Security, under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, there is a group called Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council. They came out today and said there was no, no fraud, no evidence of fraud. The most, the most, this is not a,

the most secure election in history. And Chad Wolfe, who is a Trump appointee, a Trump super loyalist, he would not fire the head of the security agency when he said this. When you lose Chad Wolf, isn't it time to say, maybe we lost this one? It's not a shame to lose.

Well, you know, if we had said that, if we had said that bill when everyone was telling Sidney Powell to stand down on Michael Flynn and, you know, the Russia collusion hoax and also impeachment and everything else, Trump's lawyers, myself included, we have prevailed on all of those things. And we have shown through the evidence and through the fight that we are willing to stand up against the deep state. Where have you prevailed in court? Just because where have you prevailed?

Where have we prevailed? In Pennsylvania. No. We have actually received. Yes, we have. No, you haven't. In Pennsylvania, we have, we have, we have a court order. You have not prevailed.

You have not prevailed on any, I'm sorry. But this is, you're a lawyer in Arizona. Well, if you let me finish, we actually have. So, well, now you're switching states. If we can go back to Pennsylvania, we have prevailed on two things. One is that we have the meaningful access part of this, where we got a court order from a judge that said, because this is a longstanding tradition,

that both Republicans and Democrats need to be able to observe the ballots being counted. That was not going on in Pennsylvania or Michigan. Of course it was. A judge in Pennsylvania said absolutely. No, it was not. We actually have, there are 682,000 ballots that were counted without meaningful access from Republicans or Team Trump. Not true. Not what they say in those states, even by Republicans.

You're just saying. No, that's not true. And we have, it's 682,000 ballots that were counted, without meaningful access. Just stop. So do you know more than this judge in Pennsylvania? Have you recently joined the court that I'm not aware of? No, I'm reading what the judge...

Let me read you what the judge in the Pennsylvania court said. You were talking about observers. By the way, this whole idea that you need observers, there are always observers in elections. Do you think that either party would go in... By law? Do you think that either party hadn't thought of this before the election. Oh, wow, we should maybe have our team in there looking at ballots. Of course,

both parties have their people in the room looking at ballots. This is, so this idea that you need extra observers. Judge, this is Pennsylvania. We're not talking about extra, Bill. No, let's, you want the facts? We are not talking about extra observers. We're talking about meaningful access. If you have two people in the room from 100 feet away and they're not able to actually observe what's going on and they're actually seeing that there are ballots that are being, manipulated that are counted twice that are being changed that the signature matching some of the envelopes are being destroyed these we have over 11,000 credible reports that are coming in through our election hotline that are

simply fraud yes they are and again I would ask you are yeah and so again I'm just I'm just redos and that is what our lawsuits are trying to do this is again I'm just going to read this one more time but this is from your own your own Homeland Security cybersecurity infrastructure agency. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

I will tell you what the lawyer or the judge in Philadelphia said. He was asking, he said, are you observers in the counting room, which is what you care about? Your campaign said... Excuse me, let me just finish. There's a non-zero number. And you can answer.

Your campaign guy said, there's a non-zero number of people. in the room. I'm not making that up. A non-zero number? That's got to be a new one for Washington, meaning there are people in the room. And then Judge Diamond said,

I am asking you as a member of the bar, are people representing the plaintiffs in the room? Trump campaign, yes. Judge Diamond, I'm sorry, then what's your problem? And I will answer, though, our problem is that's what's going on, Jenna. So, no, Bill, I will tell you, again, Yeah, a non-zero number means that we could have one or two people in there.

But you know what they did in Pennsylvania? They took the court order and they said, we will move up the election observers by six feet, and then they moved back the ballot counters by six feet. If you have two people in the room from 100 feet away, that's why the term meaningful access. Yeah, I don't know where you're getting 100 feet away. They're reading the ballots.

No, they're not. And that's exactly why we are contesting this. We got the court order and we won in Pennsylvania. But what you and your boss are contending is not what your lawyers are even fighting in court. Here is the Trump campaign lawyer in Arizona. Corey Langhofer said, this is not a fraud case. We are not alleging fraud. We are not saying anyone is trying to steal the election.

And Bill, and let me explain that. So, of course, that's one of your talking points, and I understand that. What's going on in Arizona is that you had this don't touch the green button. where if there was a problem with the machine that was being used, the election officials were telling the voter to touch the green button, which effectively canceled out their vote. That is not fraud. That is a different problem in Arizona than we're alleging in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Georgia.

So when you say we're not alleging fraud and you're using that as a talking point, you're mischaracterizing what the attorney in Arizona said and you're applying it to all of our lawsuits. It wasn't a talking point. It was a quote from your lawyer. It's a talking point when you're losing it in a way that is misleading your audience. Do you want your audience to know the fact and the truth? You invited me on to explain what Team Trump is doing, and I'm telling you you're mischaracterizing that statement to apply it to other lawsuits outside of Arizona

in a way that does not apply in the context of what our lawyer said in Arizona. That matters. We are alleging fraud. But again, we are alleging fraud in the other states. Arizona is very specific to the green button. Let's move on. I see we're not going to come to a meeting at the mind here. Let's move on to a more philosophical discussion of this

because the president himself has said, leading up to the election, repeatedly over and over again, the only way I lose is if it's rigged. Is that your view also? Because it seems like if you have that view in your head, then you could not just accept that you might have, lost. Can you accept that you might have lost?

Of course we can accept that we might have lost. So you think... And the point of this, and the point of this though, Bill, let me clarify, is that we want every legal vote to count. There's always a winner and always a loser in every election in the United States of America. What we want to make sure of... And until this one, the loser always left. No, that's not true, actually. That's not true.

That's not true. Hillary Clinton still has not conceded the 2016 election. What? And, and let me remind you, and let me remind you, and the fraud is... Let me remind you that Al Gore in 2000 had more time to contest this and have a recount in simply one state that had a one very narrow issue, and it took 37 days for that to be resolved. Because it was 500 votes in a giant state. And, and, Bill, that was the issue in 2000.

The issue here, the issue here is that we have 682,000 votes in Pennsylvania alone that we have not been able to see. how they were counted. We have reports of election fraud and irregularities across multiple states. There are seven states now. Don't you care about free and fair elections? I do, but do you care that since 2000 voter fraud has been studied by many, many organizations, including conservative ones, like the Heritage Foundation? And they found out voter fraud, in-person voter fraud, is not a thing.

It's just not a thing. So why then? It doesn't happen on any kind of level that has ever affected any vote, and it hasn't on this one. Aren't you so, aren't, don't you, aren't you a little bit ashamed of how you're denig, wait a second, how you're denigrating the people who work so hard in the most difficult election in memory. They work so hard to make this come out right. You know, that's an unfair question. If they were working really hard for this, then they would want to make sure that their states are certifying an accurate count.

They are. You should all be able to agree. You can't say that. You can't say that for sure, Bill. Don't you want to know that this election and the result is an accurate count? How much fraud is okay with you? Why do you think so many people on the right, including people like Rupert Murdoch, Carl Rove, Erdogan, the strong man of Turkey, the Pope, China now, congratulated Biden? Why have so many people come over to this idea that, okay, America? had a free and fair election.

We're congratulating the new guy. That's the way it works. You win some, you'll lose some. Why? Well, China is definitely congratulating Joe Biden because they know they can control him. Beijing Biden is something that actually really needs to be looked into. Well, I walked right into that one, didn't that?

All right, problem. Yeah, you really did, yeah. All right, Tina, you got me there. So China congratulating Biden's not a really good thing. But we have always had contested elections through the legal channels, through the recounts. And just because we have the Pope or somebody on media who is congratulating Joe Biden, no states have yet certified their results.

And that's all that we're asking is to make sure that the results that are certified are the legitimate count. And I think that that is absolutely fair. And every American should agree to that, just like Al Gore, as a Democrat candidate, did in 2000. All right. I will ask one last question. I'll let you go. Again, I commend you for coming here. And you got a smile on your face like all you happy warriors do.

I got to admire that. I am a happy lawyer. It's a great day to defend the Constitution. Oh, that's what it's about. Yeah. So, okay. But let's just, for the final question, let's take a little truth serum. My guess is if I gave you truth serum, you'd say, yeah, I know Joe Biden lost this one,

but I'm with a group of people who just believe the ideas the Democrats have are so dangerous for America. I think this is what you believe, that. we just can't let them take over. And so whatever we have to do. Now, Trump treated out, retweeted John Voitz, tweet the other day, which said, this is now our greatest fight since the Civil War,

the Battle of Re righteousness versus Satan, which I guess makes Biden Satan. And then he continued, yes, Satan, because these leftists are evil. I know you're an evangelical. Do you believe Biden is Satan? Do you believe leftists are evil? do you believe that it's okay to do anything to prevent them from taking over?

Anything, no. I am an evangelical. I'm an outspoken Christian, and I believe that we have a country that has a rule of law rather than rulers. And that's what we're defending. I campaigned very aggressively and very hard for President Trump because I believe that the American people should have reelected him for four more years. But that was the campaign on November 3rd, the people cast to their ballot. And what I'm fighting, for now is to make sure to protect the American system, which requires that every legal vote be counted fairly and accurately. I believe in our system, the separation of powers, and that the judicial branch at the

end of the day needs to intervene to make sure that whoever is declared the winner is the legitimate fair winner. Just like in baseball, the umpire has to call balls and strikes fairly. I am aggressively fighting for election integrity. Trump got the right girl for her job. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Jenna. All right. Let's read our panel.

This will be a somewhat different discussion. He is a fellow, a fellow. Hey, fellow at both the Atlantic Council and the Modern War Institute and author of the novel Devolution. Max Brooks is here, and someday I'm going to be a fellow somewhere. Let me a fellow.

All right, she is a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of Girlland. Caitlin Flanagan is back with us. All right. First off, Uh, thoughts on Jenna? Well, first off, what a lovely interview with the Black Knight from Monty Python's the Holy Grail? I mean, that literally was that scene.

Your arms off. No, it isn't? Yes, it is. I have a real, though, I have to correct her on something, though. When Jenna said that we have this precedent of taking a very long time because of, um, Gore Bush, Harry Lippman pointed out this week that the 9-11, Commission, one of the things that it said

that is just a factor to consider in 9-11 was that there was not a new president being read into security briefings for much longer than usual. And that this period of transition, it's not just about hiring people and it's not just about decorating the Oval Office. Very important things are being

postponed because of this lunatic belief. Again, but this is the supposition that Biden is actually going to stand there on January 20th. I still don't. It could happen. But I'm sorry. I've been using the term

slow-moving coup in this show since before the last election was over. And finally, I heard somebody else say it. Barry McCaffrey this week said we are watching a slow-moving Trump coup to defy the Biden election. Believe your eyes. Now, maybe this won't come to pass,

but, you know, we terminated him as president. We didn't cure him as a narcissist. You cannot break up with a narcissist. You cannot break up with a narcissist. Yes. I've read about this. We know from Michael Cohen's book that Trump has spent all his life

just having these aggressive lawsuits about ridiculous things. I was one of them. Oh, okay. I had to spend like $100 grand in court to defend the fucking ape thing. Right, and he will go on and on and on about these things.

And it pisses me off that there is no repercussions. for a frivolous lawsuit. It's like, take your shot. If you don't get it, no harm, no foul. Same as this. There should be repercussions for trying this shit. You shouldn't just be able to like, oh, I'll try to steal the election.

And if I can't, ah, no biggie. And there might be. From a philosophical point of view, we have to remember that Trump is a dishonorable man in a system that operated on the honor coat. Yes. And so a lot of things were not done simply because they were not done. post-Trump. And that's, by the way, why we have laws.

Laws take over where personal morality ends. And so, therefore, a lot of things that were just not right will have to be illegal in the post-Trump government. But, again, I don't think that we're at the end of this process, just because he sounded a little, although she denied it, a little more conciliatory. I think first he's, first he tried to stop people from voting altogether. Yes.

You know, vote suppression. didn't work. Then you go to the courts. If that doesn't work, then you go, I've said this, we go to the electoral college. The state legislatures are in the hands of Republicans. They actually picked the electors. If that doesn't work, you got the Supreme Court.

And then, of course, we have to talk about the purge at the Pentagon. Last step, if you can't get it any other way, is the military. It is very discerving to me that he is getting rid of the top people. He fired the defense

secretary and the three guys under him. This is what coups do. They put people in place when you need them in place. You're a military expert. And I can tell you that when coups happen, this is the difference. For a successful coup to happen,

you need to have people in place who actually are not just loyal to you, but have the loyalty of the people under them. So these loyalists he's put in place are grade A consummate fuck-ups who don't know what they're doing. and have no loyalty from the people. But in the military, you just,

in the military, you take orders from the fuck up above you, even if he's a fuck up. But these are civilians. That's what the main thing in the military is. I got to do what the fuck up above me says. But remember, that's, you frag him. That, and that's a good point. Because these are all civilians. As far as the uniformed services,

Mark Millie, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was very, very clear. And I was actually, I was in a conference once where Millie turned the cameras off. Because he doesn't screw around when it comes to the press. He said, I do not want a soundbite taken out of context and spun for a political agenda. I'm glad you brought him up, because if he's the next to go, we're in trouble. He's the head of the Joint Chiefs. He said, I think his quote was, I didn't belong here when Trump did that thing where he emptied Lafayette Park and you brought out the military.

So that couldn't have gone over well with Trump. And he said the military, as we've always known, it should only be a last resort. It should not involve in person. And it shouldn't be used against your own people, is another good idea for the military. But if we start, if I see a purge of generals, even colonels, because that's what happens. I've seen it in other countries. We've read about it. That's when you know you're in trouble, because they're getting Stalin did it. You're getting rid of the officer corps that doesn't agree with you and leave. And we know the military has this super Christian element. And as, I mean, I'm not saying anything about evangelicals, lovely people. She's one.

But there is a big connection more than we thought between Trump and the evangelicals. I would say because they are gullible people, they're used to believing a bunch of nonsense. And now QAnon comes along. And Donald Trump. Yes. And you believe this nonsense. And he, I feel like Trump is using this Christian arm now. Well, that's the whole theory of the case.

for these Republicans is that the Democrats have organized a SWAT team of poll workers and that they're highly organized. I don't know if you ever met a poll worker. I mean, and it's a hugely important job. My mother would do it every four years. This is not an elite fighting force that can, like, screw up with an entire election because they have a heart of assassins. They're disorganized. They're small time. They're doing their job. They believe in their job. And it's really wrong to to bring their work and their service into this kind of question. They did an incredible job.

It's like the one feather in our cap. The country that can't fucking, you know, do anything about the coronavirus or fucked up every other thing. This one we got right. The bureaucrats. But can I just read, again, if you don't think it's possible,

Mike Pompeo, I thought he was a regular Republican, not my type of guy, but we're expecting a smooth transition to the second Trump administration. This is our Secretary of State. This is days after the election. Peter Navarro.

What is he? He's something big in the White House. He said, we're proceeding under the assumption that there'll be a second Trump administration. Newt Gingrich called what's going on a left-wing paragrab, otherwise known as an election. Yes. It's Mitch McConnell.

I mean, we saw Mitch McConnell do this with Merrick Garland. We watched that and went, he really wouldn't. Mitch McConnell couldn't. He wouldn't. But he did. So are we sure he wouldn't, couldn't? Well, what you said, I think is very telling because the people that I have spoken to in national security

and homeland security think that, while you never want to say nothing would ever happen, you never want to say that a coup would never happen, especially in the age of Trump, the danger right now, the real danger that we're facing, is a homegrown insurgency. Because think about, this is the first time since the 90s when militia enlistment has gone up during a Republican administration.

It always goes up during Democrats, down during Republicans. Milia, meaning... Meaning any sort of armed government, anti-government group, any armed anti-government insurgent group. But clearly not a government group. No, no, no. I'm sorry. just guys in the woods.

No, these are the Timothy McVeagues. These are guys playing Army in the woods. Yeah, okay. Well, they're more than playing. They're what? They're more powerful than they ever were. I know, but they're not official anything. No, no, no, I'm not saying, no, no, no.

They just bought camouflage and they go in the woods. Yes, these are malicious. Okay, all right. But when you say militia, it sounds very efficient. No, no, no, I don't mean the militias of 1776 with the tricorns. Or anything. No, I mean, these are- Just guys who can't get laid who are playing in the woods.

Okay, that's all I want to. And. But they're doing a lot more now. Yeah, they have guns. Well, that's the threat is when we think to ourselves, well, God, what if there is a coup? What are we going to do? Do we do peaceful demonstrations, a general strike?

Well, they have a plan. If they feel like this government has been stolen and they're all that's left, they have their AR-15. And they have plans possibly for the next Oklahoma City. They've said it. And they have said it. We saw this with the attempted kidnapping

of the governor of Michigan. I must go back to John Voight and Satan. Do we? Yes, because he speaks for a lot of people. If you think that they are Satan, and again, this is a big part of QAnon, which is now a big part of the Republican belief system,

if you believe that the other side are pedophile ring baby eaters. Blood of babies, which I think isn't, I think clearly... Well, the blood is good, but the baby I don't. But isn't this straight from... I just push the baby around on the plate. It's straight from the protocols of Zion.

I think it's a very anti-Semitic trope that they're also working into that, that whole theory. It's always in there. It's always in there. It's like paprika. It never hurts to throw a little... Yeah, no, whenever a bell rings Mel Gibson gets his wings. It's always going to. It's like pepper. It's just always a little is good.

But there is a Maga March this weekend. Yeah. Is it tomorrow? starts? I know they don't have permits, but they're calling it the million mega march. I'm expecting 50,000 people, based on his estimates, but

say it is a million. I mean, this is in the city of Washington, D.C. A black city. Yeah. There's going to be counter marches and good, maybe.

Maybe it's good that these people get, as Napoleon called it, a whiff of the grape shot. because I'm putting my money on Black Lives Matter on this. I mean, seriously. I just think they're harder. They're harder, harder, harder people. I just do. I think that the proud boys are going to be the pantsed boys.

If this comes to this, it could be like Black Hawk down for them. They came to Washington, and they're sorry they came. But you know what, sorry, Max and I were talking. We're both the kids of World War II. You know, vets. know, my father's long past. Me too. Okay, so it's like, for the first time in our lives,

our country needs us. We need to stand together, even if the election was lost, stand behind the winner. We need to, and on our side, we need to start being far more generous about people who have supported Trump and not keep these lists

and start saying that we're going to start making a bigger tent, we're going to start working across the aisle, because we can't go on like this. I'm going to get to that at the end of the show, but right now I just want to say, election day always brings not just the winners the big winners but here in California of course we are

the king of the proposition we kind of invented this in America we're rather proud of it although it's I hate it every year because reading the voter guide takes me 10 hours but we like our propositions and it's caught on all around the country and the results are now went from a lot of different states

would you like to hear some of the state okay this is very important stuff these are some of the the propositions that were on ballots around the country, for example, a Florida has passed Proposition 7. That makes it illegal to keep your shotgun and crystal meth in the same

drawer. That's going to be big in Florida. My home state of New Jersey passed Prop 11. Oh, this is good. It establishes contact tracing for those exposed to the cast of Jersey Shore. This went on in my state. Oh, California. We passed Prop 18.

Requires real housewives to recycle their old faces. This is important. North Dakota voted on Prop 12, which officially changes the state's name to the real Dakota. Oh, Portland, Portland, Oregon, they passed Measure 15, which replaces the city's police department with dudes who play ultimate frisbee in the park. And Texas passed Prop 2. Yeah, all decisions now about

whether to have a baby are private between the doctor and the slut. But what were you saying before I had to do my bit? You know what I was thinking today? What if Bernie Sanders was the candidate? I mean, if they went this nuts about centrist, old Sleepy Joe? But they're not afraid of Sleepy Joe. I mean, we all have to accept that for very good reason, and everybody watched that murder, you know,

eight minutes on television, the whole country rose up and following that, there were 100 days of violence. And I think the response, even though that was a tiny proportion of the Democratic Party electorate, and even though it was inspired by the most important cause we can imagine, I think they are seeing that. I think when they say evil, I think they're seeing that. And they're not really understanding that Joe's their guy. You know, he's been reaching across the aisle.

Oh, they definitely don't. I mean, he won by slightly, you know, it was a, it's a certain victory. But, you know, when you look at the margins, again, we all know the pollsters were wrong. We thought it was going to be a much bigger victory. He won by... I mean, in other words, the country looked at Trump for four years, and he won by that much more than Hillary. First of all, doesn't that say that maybe we're not as sexist as we thought? I mean, it really doesn't seem to be that, oh, Hillary was a woman.

We wouldn't vote for her. They voted for Biden by this much more after Trump fucked up for that long. But, you know, that is how you defeat an insurgency. You do not do it with street violence. Because every insurgent you kill, you make another hundred. And this is exactly what my dad did in World War II. He hunted what was called were were Nazis when the Reich fell, went into the hills, vowed to fight the allies for 100 years.

And you know how we defeated that insurgency? We rebuilt Germany. Right. Those guys came back out of the hills. I agree. And they said, hey, you, Fritz, I got a job for you. And if we want to diffuse this homegrown insurgency... I agree.

We have to govern well. In fact, if you look at the U.S. military's counterinsurgency manual, peel away the tactical layers, it's just a handbook for good government. But here's the problem. Wait, we need a Marshall plan for West Virginia. Is that going to?

Yes. We need a marshal. Well, no, because this is what we've been talking about ever since I've been on the show. Globalization has ripped half the heart out of this country, and automation is going to rip half the other heart out. And if we don't get a handle on this, if we don't start to govern by what,

affects the most Americans, then we will lose again in four years. Yeah. No, I mean, it's true. I mean, the Democrats lost their base of especially white working class voters. Our manufacturing base. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Right. I mean, the Irish were never Republicans in this country until Reagan came along and they,

they've, the white working class, the Democrats have the policies that, you know, support the safety net and that the working class really needs. but socially we're very, very different, and it's terrible. It's terrible. It's heartbreaking for the Democratic Party to have lost any of the working class. But here's the conundrum.

I mean, yes, I agree. You don't want to further alienate the Republican base, the Republican voter. On the other hand, the Republican leadership, so has the whip hand in how power comes about in this country. And if we get back a little of it with Biden, I think, now, you'd need the same.

to do this, but you need to, when you have a little of this power, especially since things are so stacked against with the electoral college, the way it is, and two senators, four from the fucking Dakotas.

They have how many people, and $40 million in Cal? With these structural differences, you have to get back power, which means packing the court, which means adding Puerto Rico as a state. You have to do those moves. You have to, they've shown with Merrick Garland and now this and everything else Trump has done, they are no conscience about power.

We need to get back power. We're like the deer hunter. They have us in that shack playing Russian roulette. We got to get more bullets in the gun. But the best way to do that is to understand how did Trump get elected? Because every fanatic, no matter Nazis, communist, Taliban, there always starts. with the kernel of a legitimate concern. Correct.

What are those legitimate concerns? Because people who voted for Obama voted for Trump. Yes, absolutely. My aunt, who I love in Yonkers, New York, voted for Trump. Yep. She's not a fanatic. Right. Why? So we can fix these problems.

Because, look, there are issues we all agree on, right? None of us want illegal immigration. We just don't want to treat illegal immigrants like animals in cages. Right? Well, yes, but, I mean, Democrats did say a lot of people. of things during the primary. I mean, they made it sound like one, come one, come all. Right. And you get free health care. Well, and that's, they wanted to give, there were certain elements of our party that said, we want to give prisoners the right to vote in prison. Right. What?

I know. Um, so it will be nice, though, if I can just fantasize for a minute. If we got back to a place where we didn't have to operate all the time by, this is what Donald Trump thinks. And now we have to react to that, as opposed to just what's true or not. Donald Trump thinks he didn't lose the election. It's just bizarre. For people our age, it's just bizarre that Donald Trump's a joke. His whole life, he was a joke. And he still is a joke.

But that he controls our thinking. Everything. Everything. That we have to pretend all the time. But the best way to isolate, that's the thing that you do in an insurgent. You don't destroy them. You isolate them. Mousy Tong said that the insurgent is the fish that swims in the sea of peasants. drain the sea and do that by delivering.

That's how Franklin Roosevelt brought about this liberal world that we all enjoy. He delivered. So we've got concrete results. But here, again, I agree with all this, but making it happen. I was reading this week about parlor. Do you know what parlor is? Oh, yeah. Do you know what parlor is?

One guy, good. Okay. He's on it. He's in the militant. No, he's not. It's, I mean, you can be on it. It's like turning into like the right-wing Twitter, the right-wing Facebook.

It was shot to number one in the Apple store and Google. Okay. If you think it's bad that we have curated feeds now, which we do, of course, we don't all see the same news. We see the opposite news. That's why a vast majority of Republicans still think Trump won the election. Right, right.

But now we're going to have different platforms, apparently. This is because, and I was criticizing someone last week for going up, for, they Twitter threw off this guy. It was one of the heads of Homeland Security and he was giving his opinion about the wall in Mexicans and it wasn't my opinion, but it was an opinion. Right. It should not have been shut down. They're not doing it well. So now these people, of course, are saying, well, we'll go start our own. And they did. And now we're not ever going to hear the same information. I don't know how we achieve these. goals that you're talking about, worthy though they are. One of the things we can achieve is let people have a forum, but make sure you know who they are. It's like, you're a health guy, right? In the 1970s, my mother lobbied so hard to get ingredients put on the boxes of the food she was feeding her child. Well, the social media platforms need to do that by putting a check next to every single member. I had to be vetted to go on Twitter and Facebook.

I'm sure you did. I'm sure you did, right? So people know that it's really us. Well, that needs to be every single member, so I know I'm not listening to Sergey and Igor in Kaliningrad. Right. But if we want to bring back people, you know, bring back the right, we have to at least pretend slightly that every single major news network is not completely leftist.

Right. You know, I was just trying to watch the returns. Everyone was crying. So go to MSNBC. No, they're crying too. If we're crying about the returns from Allegheny County and we're just explicitly showing that our newscasters are so completely biased, of course the right's going to go somewhere else.

Of course they're going to leave the traditional news. And, you know, the New York Times forget it. It has nothing to say to the right. And I think that's where we all, that's this issue that our country actually needs us. You know, we all need to grow up, but news gathering sources need to grow up. people on air, no more crying on the news. They'll tell you about somebody getting beheaded after school, but then you get the

Allegheny County returns. Oh my God, they just have to be taken out in a stretcher. We, you know, we're just going to have to really suck it up and be a little less partisan in the news. I agree. And by the way, to your point about issues, marijuana, minimum wage, Medicaid. When

Democrats run on those issues, they win, and they even win in red states. This last election, New Jersey, Arizona, Montana, South Dakota made marijuana legal. Even Mississippi made it legal for medicinal. Trump won Florida, but minimum wage raise, won big in Florida, and he was against it. During the 2018 midterms, expanding Medicaid benefits. Idaho, Nebraska, Utah. Can you find more conservative trio of states than that?

Well, the propositions are... It's not... The secret sauce is not that secret. Right. And the propositions are where people don't feel, I belong to Republicans or I belong to Democrats. The propositions are where they can just say what they believe, and it's actually they have a lot of common beliefs. All right. All right. Thank you.

This was really enlightening. Thanks for coming. Time for new rules, everybody. New rules. Okay. Since Mike Pence vanished for a week and came back wearing a mask, we have to assume he got his lips done. And Mike, don't stop there.

Get yourself a killer wreck because America already has an ass that just won't quit. New Rule, the Trump winery has to commemorate the election with a special vintage sour grapes. With notes of bitter orange horseshit and... Something Eric dropped in the barrel. Sour grapes is a full-bodied, voluptuous, dare I say, morbidly obese wine that goes with everything from burnt steak to KFC, also available in a sparkling variety if they can get the hookers to pee in it.

New Roll McDonald's must stop trying to come up with healthy options like their new Mcplant sandwich and just lean into being McDonald's. McDonald's, the greasy, high-calorie junk food for when you want to hate fuck your mouth, with absolute garbage because everything in your life says, oh, fuck it. Besides, McDonald's already has a Mcplant. They're called French fries.

New rules, someone has to tell iPhone enough already with the hidden features. The latest is their touch-sensitive secret button. Well, good luck waiting for men to find that. You know, because the... New rule, someone must tell Rudy Giuliani, who's been out promoting obsubstantiated conspiracy theories

about the integrity of our electoral process, you might be taken a little more seriously if the last time we saw you you weren't lying on a bed fumbling for your dick. And finally, new rule with two Senate seats in Georgia still possible, seats that will

make the difference between gridlock and progress. Democrats must figure out why so many voters still say to them, you're good enough, you're smart enough, but doggone it, we don't like you. Under the headline, something went wrong.

The New York Times described a post-election conference call between Democratic leaders where they wept, cursed, and traded blame. Wait, I thought we won this one. Which we did. We did, and yes, ding-dong, the whiny little bitch is dead. Celebration is in order.

We took a big step toward saving democracy and in the process lost 280 pounds of ugly fat. All right, that's my last fat joke. For the next five minutes. But Democrats were supposed to flip the Senate and didn't. Supposed to flip state legislatures, not a one. And they lost seats in the House.

In a year that was so much about making people aware of racism, their share of minority votes went down. The message to Democrats from so much of the country seems to be, we don't like Trump, but we still can't bring ourselves to vote for you. If Cracker Jack was made of popcorn and dog shit and half the people throughout the popcorn, popcorn should want to know why. Liberals can either write off half the country as irredeemable,

or they can ask, what is it about a D next to a candidate's name that makes it so toxic? Let's ask Ruben Gallego. He's a congressman from Arizona, and he was asked how his Democrats could do a better job connecting to Latinos. He said, first, start by not using... the term Latinx, which the vast majority

of Latinos have never heard of, and when they do, don't like it. Who likes it? Pandering white politicians, who mistake Twitter for real people. And don't get it, that Latinx is like fetch. You can try to make it happen, but it's never gonna. Virginia Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger

said after the election, if we are classifying Tuesday as a success, we will get fucking torn apart in 2022. That's a Chris a little bit. She was urging members not to talk about defunding the police. James Clyburn agreed. Defund the police is killing

our party, he said. Pennsylvania Democrat Connor Lamb says Democratic rhetoric needs to be dialed back. It needs to be rooted in common sense. Thank you. Thank you.

There, in my opinion, is the crux of the problem. too often don't come across as having common sense to a huge swath of Americans. And these are people who believe in Qaeda. But as I've said before, politics in this country is binary. You have to wear everything anyone on your side does.

Republicans are the party of don't wear masks, kids in cages, lock her up, and Democrats are the party of every hypersensitive social justice warrior woke bullshit story in the news. They're the party that disappears people or tries to make them apologize for ridiculous things.

Anne Hathaway apologized last week because in her new movie she plays a witch, a fictional character that has three claw-like fingers and that's offensive to people with limb differences. The week before, the NHL's Arizona coyotes dropped a player after it came out in the press that when he was in eighth grade, he bullied a disabled kid. Yes, that's a bad thing to do. But are we really going after people for what they did in middle school now? Democrats already lost seats for going after what

Brett Kavanaugh did in high school. Common Sense. Last year, I read about how NBC held an emergency meeting to determine if Mario Lopez should be fired from his job at Access Hollywood. I thought, holy shit, did he sexually assault somebody? No. He went on a podcast and when the host brought up the trend of liberal parents letting toddlers pick their gender identity,

he said, my God, if you're three years old and you're saying you think you're a boy or a girl, I just think it's a dangerous as a parent to make that determination. Cue the grovelling apology, followed by America saying, uh, yeah, I think

Mario's right. Maybe kids shouldn't make big life decisions while you still need to make choo-choo noises to get the food in their mouth? I can do this all day. Cite stories big and small that are endlessly on people's news feeds that add up to a constant drip, drip, drip

of these people are nuts. Everybody heard about that story out of San Francisco about a guy who got on a crowded elevator with a female professor, and when she asked what floor, he said, women's lingerie. You know, a little joke for which he earned a formal

complaint because it left her shaken. Shaken? Who are these jellyfish? Like the woman who almost derailed Biden's campaign because he kissed the back of her head before she went out to make a speech. She said, her brain couldn't process

what was happening. Really? Your brain couldn't process that? Like string theory or wormholes? An old man was trying to show support in his old man way. She said she was embarrassed, shocked, confused. Well, then the outside world isn't for you. And certainly running the world isn't.

I talked to a guy in the Midwest once who told me this story about the day he went out to get his car in the supermarket parking lot, but couldn't back out because a mother and her very young daughter were standing behind his car, which was next to their car, which had a Hillary bumper sticker on it. And the little girl was screaming at her mother who was profusely apologizing to the child. And he said to me,

I just can't let people like that take over this country. That's what people vote on, not policy. Democrats kept saying in the campaign, you can't possibly think Trump is preferable to what we're selling. And many voters keep saying, yes, we can. in fact our primary reason voting for him is to create a bulwark against you

because your side thinks silence is violence and looting is not because you're the party of chasing speakers off college campuses and making everyone walk on eggshells and replacing let's not see color with let's see it always and everywhere formerly the position of the Cuccox clan

it would be so easy to win elections if we would just drop this shit. Democrats need to listen to our new president-elect's old boss. This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. Quickly, like before they vote in Georgia. All right, that's our show.

I want to thank Max Brooks, Caitlin Flanagan, and Jenna Ellis will be back next week for our big finale. Thank you very much, folks. Hatch 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.