Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #559: David Shor, Nick Gillespie, Heidi Heitkamp

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

Bill’s guests are David Shor, Nick Gillespie, and Heidi Heitkamp. (Originally aired 3/19/21) 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. Look at this. Thank you. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, spring and sprung here, huh? Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I could see the happiness, the enthusiasm, the love. Because thank you. And we are getting back to normal. I see it everywhere. The traffic is. heavier. Restaurants are open. Republicans pretend to give shit about the debt again.

I feel like any minute, Pam Anderson could remarry Kid Rock. Things are just returning. And listen to this. The CDC, they said, you know, the distancing rule they have for kids, school kids, which has been six feet. Now,

three feet. Moving in the right direction. In Florida, the students are hopeful that by fall they'll be back inside their teachers. It's Oh, I kid, Florida. But of course, with us reopening, it brings other issues. We have a surge of migrants at the border, and the authorities say we cannot take any more unskilled foreigners

who don't even seem like they want to work. We already have Megan and Harry. And, oh, that's a good crowd. Good crowd. Good crowd. She gave out treats when they're. laugh at the politically incorrect ones. Good. But here's something interesting I read about the pandemic

that we're hopefully coming out of it. During this last year, they say, this survey's found. The average single person has been masturbating three times a day. I don't know who this is exactly. I assume it's the guy in the Zoom meeting who claims he's petting his cat.

I assume. Now, well, of course, this doesn't, really reveal anything about human nature we don't already know, but it does explain why Costco is always out of Kleenex. But hey, Biden's kind of kick an ass.

You know, they... Well, you know, his big thing was, I'm going to get a hundred... That was his big thing. I'm going to get a hundred million vaccines out and a hundredies way ahead. Ninety-seven million vaccines. I've got two million a day now. Trump... Trump said, oh, sure, if you want to... show-off government that tries.

No, Biden promised $100 million in 100 days, way ahead of that schedule. Of course, you have to understand this is a guy who eats dinner at 5 p.m. So... But one reason why they're doing so well with that is they expanded the list of

who can give shots. Dentists. Did you know that? You're getting for medical students. Midwives. Midwires. I didn't even have those. veterinarians. And that, I went to my vet. Oh, it's fine. It's a little different. He gave me this shot, and he put a cone on my neck. I don't know. But it's fine. I mean, yes, it was, it's a little,

okay, it's a little weird going to the vet for a shot. I had to trick myself to get into the car. But other than that, it's a, but you've read this. People are figuring out ways to jump the vaccine lines. Oh, yeah, at Berkeley now, you can get it if your spiritual advisor says, you're an old soul. That seems wrong. In L.A., you can get it if your facial filler is still under warranty. Speaking of facial filler,

the Oscar nominations are out. Are you excited about that? Yes, the leading contenders for Best Picture are Nomad Land, Minari, and the Sound of Metal. So, for theaters, we're trying to figure out how to reopen at 15 percent capacity? I think we found the answer. All right. We've got a great show. We have Heidi Heidcamp is back here. Oh, good. Now, Nick Gillespie. Good show. But first up, he's a former

data scientist with the 2012 Obama campaign. It was now the head of data science at Open Labs. David Shore. David. Hey? Hey. No, are you? Hey, I'm good. Good to see you. Now, let's, uh, Let's set you up for the people who may not know who you are. Data scientist. I hadn't heard that term before. What exactly is a data scientist? Statisticians who...

I think the joke is it's programmers who are bad at statistics or statisticians who are bad at programming. Well, whatever it is, you must be good at it because you did it for Obama when you were 20. Right? That's right. Wow. And you were able to do that because you graduated or started college at 13?

That's right. Me too. So, okay, so Boy Genius, let me ask you this then. How'd you do with the 2020 election? Did you, were your predictions close? Because the polls were way off, were they not? The polls were wrong. You know, this was a really terrible year for polling.

You know, 2016 was a bad year for polling, but 2020 somehow ended up being worse. And I think, you know, at least for me, I'll say, the election was closer than I thought it would be. though I think the joke is, you know, everyone predicted going in that Joe Biden would be president and the Democrats would have 51 or 50 or 51 seats in the Senate. That's kind of what happened.

But I'd love to talk just a little bit about why the polls were so wrong. I would love to hear it. Yeah, so I'm going to, there's a tale of two errors. I'm going to start with 2016. So, you know, the big fundamental reason why polls are wrong. You know, everyone likes to talk about, you know, the undecided's breaking or, you know, turn out. But it's actually just that survey takers are super, super weird.

That's like the big problem. Weird, like creepy? I mean, a lot of them, I'm sure. No, there's a real... Like when people get the call, they think it's a weirdo? So the biggest thing, you know, looking at 2016, is something called social trust. So, you know, the way this gets operationalized,

social scientists, they ask, do you think people can generally be trusted or do you think people should keep to themselves? Most people say that people can't be trusted, something like 60, 70% of people. But the few people who do trust the people around them, kind of unsurprisingly, way more likely to answer phone surveys.

Yeah. So you're getting trusting people. You're getting trusting people. You're getting nice people. We've done personality tests. People are way more agreeable. Like the kind of people who just stop what they're doing and they say, oh, a contemporary researcher

wants to know my views on contemporary events. Oh my God. Yeah, I'll help him out. Yeah. Which is not what I would say about that. You're right. Yeah, definitely not. Fuck that.

What's in it from me? Exactly. There's a lot of voters just like you. And so, you know, the big problem, this has always been true. People with low social trust have never answered phone surveys. But it used to just not matter. It used to be that, like, politics was a fight about whether taxes should be higher or lower.

Right. And Donald Trump changed that. You know, Donald Trump changed what it meant to be a Republican. And so, you know, suddenly, like if you look, among people who trust their neighbors, you know, that group swung toward Clinton by, like, five or six points. That's what the polls captured. That's the polling we saw. But there was this silent, hidden majority of people who didn't trust the people around them. and weren't answering phones.

And those people disproportionately working-class white voters who lived in the Midwest, and that's, you know, the big reason why all of these Midwestern polls were wrong. So will they fix this next time when they start to do polling? Will they adjust for that? Can they?

Well, I mean, there's a different polling story, which is in 2016, you know, the states were wrong, but at least, you know, the national polls were about right. 2020 was way worse. You know, the national polls were off by, like, three or four points. And the reason I think is kind of funny, it's basically coronavirus, that, like, you know,

When we do our surveys, we actually joined them to the voter file, and so we could see, starting in March, the percentage of people who answered surveys who were registered Democrats just shot up. And the reason is that Democrats were stuck at home. You know, they respected the lockdown. You can tell with creepy cell phone data that Democrats really were staying home and Republicans were out partying and doing spring break. And those Democrats were just desperately answering every survey they could find.

And that's actually why the surveys were wrong. It's kind of funny. Okay So, yeah What was the biggest surprise, though, of the 2020? I mean, for me, I don't know if this is what the scientists said, but the fact that Trump did better with minorities. Yeah.

Okay, so what happened there? Yeah, I think the big surprise. I mean, in 2016, you know, Trump did do better with non-white voters than Barack Obama did. And I think a lot of people weren't surprised they wanted to write that off. They're like, oh, well, Barack Obama, there's a lot of reasons he would do better

with non-white voters. But in 2018, this really should have been a warning sign. You know, non-white voters trended against Democrats while white voters trended toward. And this was really consequential. You know, we lost the Florida Senate race. If the Georgia governor's race, if Stacey Abrams had done as well

among black voters as Hillary Clinton did, she would have been governor right now. But 2020 was a continuation of that trend. And I think that was the thing that was most surprising to me, because it's something that, you know, a lot of the polls also didn't see coming. Just to run through it, not Hispanic voters swung something like nine percentage points against Democrats. And that's percentage points. That means roughly one in ten Hispanic voters switch from Clinton. And that's a group that Democrats count on. Historically, yes. And, you know, with black voters, it wasn't as large, but still, there was a two to three percent shift among Asian voters. You know, the data, the jury's still out, but it seems like there was at least a five or six percent shift. So this is a really big deal. Well, I've read that you've said most voters are not liberal. Yeah, I mean, I think that's...

Even most Democrats. You know, among Democrats, it's roughly 50-50. But I think the big difference, you know, when you look at ideology, is that among white people, about 90% of white liberals vote for Democrats and about 80% of white conservatives vote for Republicans. But with non-white voters, it's not like that. And the reason, and this is just like, arithmetically, ideology doesn't vary very much by race.

Roughly the same number of black, white, and Hispanic voters identify as liberal, moderate, or conservative. But partisanship varies a lot. And the reason for why is that Democrats historically have done really well with non-white conservatives. And the story of 2020 is that Democrats used to win Hispanic conservatives by double digits, and this time Trump won them by double digits.

Would you say that there's a woke, liberal are now really two different, at least wings of the party. People who consider themselves classic liberals like I do. Yeah, I mean... Yes. That's why I think they lose, the Democrats have been losing votes that they should be winning. You know, I think the big thing. Defund the police.

Could you come up with a more drive away the voters phrase than that, for example? You know, crime is really unpopular. if you're going to give political advice. You know, I think the core problem here is that as the party has become more educated, educated people have increasingly defined, you know, the brand of the Democratic Party. And, like, one thing I like to say is a lot of people

will say it's like a truism in politics that Democrats are too wonky, you know, we're eggheads, you know, we talk too much about issues, we need to communicate our values. But, you know, the median voter doesn't share our values. values are weird and alien. If they had our values, they would be liberals. The only way Democrats historically won elections was by, you know, talking about concrete issues that people agreed with us on. It's how Bill Clinton won. It's how, you know, Barack Obama won. And, you know,

I think that was one of Joe Biden's strengths. What are these values you think the average voter doesn't share? Well, you know, just to go back to the polling thing, you know, like social trust is a big one. You know, liberals actually trust government. They trust society. You know, they really believe in positive some change, you know, and the potential for, you know, and the potential for positive some interaction, but also, you know, racial resentment, attitudes toward gender, what kind of societies people want to live in, you know, what kind of neighborhoods people want to live in? Liberals like to live in, like, exciting, tightly packed cities

from a personality perspective, you know, scientists like to study this five-factor personality model, openness to new experiences, useful word to know, is just this idea of how people respond to novel stimuli. And, you know, it's highly correlated with liberalism. Some people, you know, when they see something new and exciting, and there's like a new ethnic restaurant or something, they get really excited and energized.

But a lot of people, the majority of people, you know, see novel stimuli, and it drains them. It freaks them out. And that's why there's all of this geographic sorting. But we seem to be entering an era of resegregation that's coming from the left. I mean, on many college campuses, there are separate dorms, separate black dorms,

graduation ceremonies, stuff like that. How will that affect elections in the future? You know, I think there's a lot of, there's a great study in North Carolina that showed that, you know, racially integrated schools make people more liberal. But, you know, I think just to go back, I think that the important thing is to just realize that most non-white voters are not liberal. They don't identify as liberal. We should take that really seriously. And I think that when it, like realizing that most voters don't share our values means that we should instead try to meet. people where they are with the values that they actually hold, and that we should talk them about issues that they care about.

All right. Well, thanks for coming on. Very enlightening. Let's see what you're doing when you're 40. All right. Thanks, David. Let's meet our panel. There they are.

He's an editor at Large and Reason and host of the recent interview podcast. Nick Gillespie is back with us. Hey, Nick, in a while. And she is the former Democratic Senator from North Dakota and co-founder of the One Country Project, our returning champion, Heidi Hyde-Kamp is back here. Great to see you.

Always love to see you here. Okay, let's get to the tragedy of the week. Joe Biden, just before we went on, was speaking in Atlanta about the spa shootings. He said, whatever the motivation we know this, too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning. The past year, feeling their safety

and the safety of their loved ones are at stake. I thought that was a great statement. True statement. Let's not bury the lead. a big crime, violent crime against Asians up 150% last year. This is intolerable. We have to address it. However, this story is also instructive and I think it says a lot about our tribalism and our inability to see

evidence as opposed to what would fit the narrative that we already believe. Christopher Ray says it does not appear that that's the head of the FBI. It does not appear that the motive was racially motivated. and yet Marilyn Strickland, she is from Washington State, Congresswoman, racially motivated violence should be called for exactly what it is, and we must stop making excuse or rebranding it as economic anxiety or sexual addiction. But what if it is that? Everything I've read about this guy, Robert Aaron Long, conservative Baptist,

he's an albino assassin. He's flagellating himself because he feels bad about sex. all the sexual urges shouldn't be doing this. Porn addiction. Massage parlors seeks treatment for sexual addiction. The roommate said

whenever he would talk about visiting the massage parlors that was in the context of God and his parents. Wouldn't the roommate know if it was about race? No, maybe we'll find out something that's not there, but it seems like people insist. No, this is what I thought it was,

and I'm just going to insist. I think we're going to look at this through the lens of our bias. But my criticism there is how is Christopher Ray know it wasn't about race. I mean, he criticizes jumping the gun, but he hasn't finished his

investigation. We don't know. He said it doesn't appear to be. Well, shut your mouth and say, I don't know yet. Can you all just give us some time to finish the investigation? I think that's what... I mean, I think that that is basically what he was saying, and I think it's important

because we're in a supercharged environment where everybody is talking about racism and white supremacism. The same survey that showed 150% increase in hate crimes in 16 major cities, also found overall hate crimes last year went down by 7%. So, you know, we shouldn't be rushing to try to fit everything into a hate crime. The history of Asians in America, they were the first people to be excluded from immigration. And as a matter of fact, South Asian, Indians were not, there was a 1923 Supreme Court case where an Indian tried to say why he should be allowed citizenship.

It ended up, not only did he lose, they ended up kicking out other Indians who had managed to get here. They have a horrible history in this country, but it's also a great immigrant story in that Asian Americans now make far more than the median average family household in terms of income, in terms of education, in terms of opportunity. So as we talk and try to fix racism in our society, we also have to look at bigger pictures. The Asians are like Jews in America, where they face a lot of specific problems, but they also succeed very well, and they ultimately are accepted for that.

I think, you know, the problem in this country is we don't confront issues like what's happening right now with the Asians until we have a mass shooting in, you know, at massage parlor. But why not? But you seem to be... It's that one-off. You're insisting that it is a racially-off.

Right. I really feel like if it was Armenians who were manning the massage parlors, he would have killed Armenians. We don't know that, Bill. We don't know. But you seem to be, what we do know, I mean, the roommate, the roommate, that's what he was saying in the privacy of his home. Wouldn't he have said it there? I do think it's right to say, you know, over the past year, and this is something that, Trump and a number of people, you know, we're pushing the Wuhan flu type of thing and whatnot. And that, you know, this is odious, awful, racial, racist language that should be confronted.

And, you know, that's something Biden said. When you hear something, don't put up with it, and put it down, I think that's true. At the same time, I think turning this particular instance into something which it may not, that in the end does not help you reach people who are racist. That confirms their idea. My point is, until there is something that is so heinous, we don't confirm. front real problems. But could I just point out that sexual guilt

from religion is also a big thing? It's been a big thing for millennia. Millenia. Exactly. People feel bad because they're sexual beings and religion makes you

feel bad about that. I think there's also to control you. The question here of, you know, what about massage parlors? What about legalizing sex work? There are ways that we can change, you know, how people interact and how they meet basic needs, you know, in an open way, in a more constructive way. There's many things that we can be talking about coming out of this. And I do think it's right to, you know, to take a moment to look at the

residue of anti-Asian racism in America and deal with it, but not necessarily to turn this into something it's not. Is it that hard to keep two thoughts in our mind at the same time? that this epidemic of violence against Asians is horrible and we have to do something about it. And this probably isn't part of it. It's just something else. But I think people get so frustrated that no one's paying attention that everybody jumps on something like this and says,

see, there it is. And then you get the attention. And that's the problem. We don't give attention to problems that aren't catastrophized in this country. That's a good segue to my issue about the border. It's that crisis at the border. headline on the news season right every year

and I thought it was interesting because I also read today along with the border stories that over at the White House they've put people on leave and fired some for smoking pot I thought this was the new White House I thought hey wait wait

I thought Kamala had a had a come to Jesus moment on pot and we were all like it only lasted for as long as she was high and then she went back to being a cop Okay, well, not cool. Anyway, I think I'm connecting these two issues here, and I'll tell you why, because the Democrats are putting forth legislation this week in pieces.

Now they're trying with the easy stuff because immigration is the issue that keeps haunting them and that we as a country have to solve. So they're dreamers, stuff about that, humanitarian aid, farm workers. These are the easy ones. Biden also said we should address the root cause. and then he mentioned aid to the Central American economies. Excuse me, the root cause is drugs.

Drugs. We like drugs. They grow drugs. It's illegal. Those countries are going to be run by narco-terrorists. Can I even go a little bit further and say the problem isn't drugs? The problem is the war on drugs. Well, that's what I mean.

Yeah, no, but because we're not... Trust me, I don't think the problem is drugs. drugs has never been my problem. Always been able to get them. The cartels aren't moving avocados, right? They're moving weed, they're moving cocaine. They're moving out of their substances. And this is where Joe Biden, unfortunately,

is the most clueless person. He's the worst person to have in the White House at this time. This is a guy who, over the past 50 years, has been involved in every major increase in the war on drugs. I don't think if drugs is the issue, this is not the guy you want. want in the White House right now as it intersects with immigration? You know, the problem is we can all say let's legalize it, but it leads to really some pretty

serious consequences. Like what? Like total addiction, expansion of addiction? I'm not saying about marijuana. I'm talking about what can happen. Well, okay. Portugal did it. Portugal did that.

They legalized everything. I think a couple of... De-criminalized. And they actually saw lower use rights, lower addiction rights, lower social problems. Yeah. Let's take a different run on. this, the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people in this

country don't want to legalize drugs, but they also don't want to deal with consequences of not legalizing. The overwhelming majority wants to legalize weed. Well, yeah, and that's where the Biden administration's way behind. And in November, if I may, in November, people in Oregon

decriminalized all drugs, like for personal possession. People in D.C. legalized electric mushrooms and things like that. Everywhere you look, people are certain to say we can have the war on drugs or we can have drugs. You know, it's not a tough choice. And by the way, all the bad

illegal drugs, they have pharmaceutical versions. It's not that they're not illegal. You can get cocaine. They just call it Adderall. You know, you can get heroin. They just call it methadone or opioids. This is the craziest story about pot because it's scheduled higher than those

drugs because they have a pharmaceutical reason. Right. This whole thing with marijuana, I don't know why the Biden administration would step into this because it is they don't see the trend nationally, which is South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana. South Dakota, right? Yeah.

So if South Dakota is going to do it, my state has not yet, but we will. Everybody will. You're next? You're next. Just kidding. So the next time you come on this show, there won't be all this arguing.

There won't be all this arguing. No, but, you know, The challenge that you have with the border is that no one wants to tell the truth about what's going on, which is the cartels are doing very, very dangerous, horrible things. These kids are coming to the border, basically advanced by... Because of illegal drugs. Well, no, they're coming to the border

because they're economic migrants, and they're going to come into this country and work and send remittances home because their parents cannot afford to live in that country. They're going to be exactly like my grandparents were from Ireland and Italy. The cartels... are moving these kids. And so if you return these kids, they

won't have the ability to pay and their families, they're going to be grave-dict. This stuff with the kids is really, really bad. The president is finding out that kids in cages was horrible, but when kids show up at the border, you put them in some sort of a thing that somebody can call a cage.

But there is that larger question then, like, you know, they need to have, like, for surges, they need to have more facilities, they need to have more resources to deal with people, humane, You know, most assailies come here. They don't get accepted and they go back home, but we need a broader discussion on immigration.

Donald Trump's greatest achievement was to turn everybody in favor of immigrants. 75% of Americans think immigration is a good thing for the country. 85% of Democrats, 65% of Republicans, according to Gallup. Joe Biden should run with that. Then how did he get elected on, I'm going to build a wall? Yeah, because he got elected by getting the smallest,

percentage of votes that you could get and still squeaked. He got elected because there's two different kinds of immigrants. The ones that have been here for years and are your neighbors and everybody's in favor of them and the ones coming to the border that they've been told are members of the cartel and they're going to rape your children. Right.

And so when you're, right, and so when you abandon the border as a part of immigration, you lose. So you've got to talk about border security in conjunction with what's happening at the border. Yeah, but the way to secure the border is

to let more people pass through legally. Let anybody who wants to come here who's not infected with a communicable disease or has a violent criminal record. Let them come through, let them work, let them live, let them pay taxes legally. And then you can start seeing the bad

people will start coming in in other places. And I will tell you, if that was Joe Biden's position, he wouldn't be president of the United States. Right now. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying politically... He beat Donald Trump pretty handily. And, unless, Like most Democrats, he was very pro-immigrant because the Democratic Party has never been

overwhelmingly favorable to immigrants. That is where the country is. He's president of the United States by 45,000 votes. Never forget that. What? And 45,000 votes. You're talking to... If Biden had... If 45,000 votes had switched in three states, Donald Trump would have been reelected.

That's how we got elected. Yeah, right, right. Turn about a spare prey. Right. It's closer than the one he won. But, think about how crazy that is when 7 million people this country. 75% you and I have had this discussion bill.

Yes, and it's about your state. Yes, it is. You gotta give that up. Yay, North Dakota. No. We get three electoral votes. You get four goddamn senators because it's the Dakota territory.

It shouldn't be two states. And California with 40 million people gets the same number of senators. Oh, that damn constitution. What are we going to do about it? Oh, suddenly now, now it's the Constitution. All right. I want to bring in a little economics here

because I think, look, we just passed this giant bill. Okay, good. There's some nice things that are happening here that we're all happy about. You know, child poverty has been cut in half. I don't know anyone is for child poverty. But just let me give you the economic recap because people don't follow it.

Because I hear the economy is ready to sizzle again. We're going to have the roaring 20s again. Well, maybe. Or maybe the Depression 30s. I don't know. But market value is at 32 times earnings. The norm is 16 times. In other words, it's 32 times what a company is really worth is what the market is valued at, and that's twice what it normally is.

Okay. Federal debt stands at 100% of GDP. Only the second time since World War II, the federal debt is bigger than the size of the economy. The debt is bigger than the economy itself. Okay. Between 1930 and 1940, when we had, you know, that's the Depression. so they spent 6% of GDP on the Depression. In recessions between 1945 and 2008, 1% of GDP

we spent to get out of shit. Now, we spent 26% of GDP in 12 months. Yeah. With all the... It's $5 trillion to fight the pandemic problems. Four trillion, this is adjusted for inflation, to win World War II. We spent a trillion more on this than World War II.

maybe this will work out. I don't know. But there seems to be this new... There seems to be this new ideology brought on by the pandemic that you can just dream up any number. I mean, I remember when Obama was bailing us out of the Great Recession and it was $780 billion

and people were like, holy fuck, he signed a paper for $780. And now they sign this like it's the dinner check. So, thoughts? Well, the first thing is the Democratic Party, saw what happened during the Trump years, right? Trump spent like a drunken sailor.

He gave away billions of dollars to major corporations, who, by the way, we bailed out. They are turn at the bar. Right, right. The Republicans definitely put us in debt way more than the Democrats. Right, right. They always do.

And then the Democrats have to come in and the Republicans act like, I don't know who spent all this money. They're like a blackout drunk. And the point is, when it is, When is it the working class people? The difference between these plans and the one that was just passed is I think it was appropriately targeted to the lower quartile

and that it will, in fact, encourage economic growth. And you could see economic growth that would help pay for it. I'm not going to say it'll pay for itself. But it's like when is it the turn of the lower middle class to actually get a break from government? Instead of seeing it always go to the richest in this hundred. I don't necessarily just necessarily just. I agree with you. It would be great if most of this was going to deal with COVID.

5%, according to the committee for a responsible federal budget. It's not going to lower quartile people. In this, our expanded Obamacare subsidies that go to households making $58,000. There is a lot of... There are child and tax credits that max out at households making $400,000. One of the biggest scams that has been going on in the entire 21st century, and I think it started with George W. Bush giving free and reduced price drugs

to seniors who are wealthy back in Medicare Part D. Now you are shoveling money at people like everyone at this table who don't need it, who haven't been hurt economically by the pandemic, and then we're saying, oh, but you know what, we're helping those poor kids. Check back and see if they're actually not poor. I feel like we got to this mental place

where, like, we've been talking about how the debt is out of control since Ross Perrault. Like for 30 years, like, oh my God, this debt. We got to this point where it was so out of control. And then Trump just went, fuck it. And, you know, he made it way worse just in a quick time of time. And then I feel like they're in this place now where it's like, like when you're at 4 a.m. And you're drunk out of your mind.

I might as well just stay up until the next day. Why try to get to sleep at all? I'm just going to try to pull this off. We're at that place where two is too many and five's not enough. Right. It's just like, fuck it. It's apparently funny money anyway. The reckoning is going to be brutal because the economy is growing in the last quarter

there was something like 4% economic growth. It's going to do well without this. It's going to be supercharged, but it is like it's a Coke binge. It's going to burn out all economists, even Marxist economists at the University of Massachusetts at Ermhurst say, when you run this level of debt with no sign of stopping, it reduces long-term economic growth. And that's one of the reasons why for the past 20 years is low economic growth. budget is to pay off the debt, is just to pay bankers for lending you this money.

If interest rates go up for where they are right now, which is zero, we will spend behind, we may exceed in our interest payments what we spend on national defense. So I'm not defending the debt. I am defending that the prioritization that we've seen in the last four years has been way off the mark in terms of what the American people do. So that has nothing to do with this 1.9-205. It does. It does have something to do with this package. which is to try and balance this

and then to set it right at some point into the future. But you're like saying, oh, well, you know, Yale all bellied up to the trough when Trump was there and now Biden has to have the policy of austerity. Give me a break. It's not austerity. Give poor people, people who are struggling money. Let people who are doing well pay their own damn way.

I mean, that's what it has to do. I don't, I mean, I was not. That should be the democratic position. I was not a fan of the 2000. $1,000, you know, I thought that wasn't targeted enough. I thought we should have been much more clever about how we did it and where we made the investments. We could have done great infrastructure investments with that money. So, okay, I'll give you that.

But damn it, I'm tired of people sitting around and criticizing Democrats for tax and spend when every time we have a Republican president, we go into the debt and deficit. And somehow, they, when you ask, somehow, even though it happens, Every time, this pattern, every time, of the Democrats come in and clean up the room that Led Zeppelin just trashed. And then they ask, who's the party? Who made this now? Who's the party of fiscal responsibility? Oh, it's the Republicans. Like the fucking movie? Are you watching? Do you not understand we have tapes and we have numbers and we have history here?

I mean, Reagan did it. Okay. I know. All right. So Lesweek I was talking about, to change the subject of the Turner classics, the movie. like Turner Classics. I once did a thing for them. And they, but, of course, in this new era, they had to reframe the classic. So they have to have a guy come on at the beginning. Yeah, see, there it is.

I'm not lying. And give a little speech about why movies that you used to just enjoy, because you understood, you understood the times change, people change, and mores change. It's called evolution. But now it's called problematic.

Anyway, so we... Yes, it's so obvious. you know. And Gone with the Wins is on the list. Breakfast of Tiffany's. My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady is too rough for them. It was too corny for me when I was 10.

My father wanted me to go see it. I wouldn't. Okay. But those aren't just the only movies. Would you like to see some of the other ones that they have to give warnings to now? The classics, oh, I'm sure you would. These are some of the other ones.

I don't think these really need warnings, but they have it. Sleping Beauty, a prince kisses an unconscious woman without consent. See, there... The Wizard of Oz, a powerful woman of color, is murdered by a rural white girl. Psycho inaccurately portrays the lives

of the vast majority of transgender motel owners. Rosemary's baby fails to present Planned Parenthood as a viable option. Jaws! portrays white people as victims. Wrong! The graduate depicts a problematic age discrepancy that you can't blame on the man. Oh, look, the greatest story ever told, yes.

Warning portrays in a positive light, a power imbalance, between Mary, a Palestinian teenager, and God, a more powerful man. And, of course, Braveheart, warning, stars Mel Gibson. So, look, I, you know, I swear to God, I don't want to talk about cancel culture and this nonsense every week. But I just don't think people understand how much this is a tsunami and how fast the goalposts change

almost on a weekly basis. I just literally off the top of my head before I came out, wrote down three things I could think of not just what you do now, what you do now, it's anything you've ever done. And I can, I'll give you examples of that. Not just what you say,

what you say. It's what, now what you listen to. They can get you for that. What you order? Who you say you like? Any sort of association? If you retweet something? If you, you know, I like this picture. Who was the woman in the Mandalorian?

What did she do? She liked something. She's a Nazi. Oh, that's different, right? I'm thinking to somebody else. Well, she's not a Nazi. She's involved in a Japanese. She's involved.

She's called other people Nazi. Right. She's the Nazi. Okay. Everyone's a Nazi. She does hang with white supremacists. It's like a Mel Brooks movie. Yeah.

Hangs with whites. I suppose I'm now subject to defamation. I don't know. I mean, it depends on what your definition of white supremacist is. That also, the goalposts there changed a lot. Used to be a guy in a clanhood who... But I think we have to be really careful. There's two things the Republicans think they're going to get Biden on.

Cancel culture and this whole Dr. Sue stuff that's going on where they're reading green eggs and ham, proving that some of these senators can actually read. and immigration. And so we can't ignore the fact that we got Donald Trump was in part because of political correctness. I mean, you did a whole show called politically correct. And when people say, tells it the way it is, the guy lied every day repeatedly,

and the reason why they thought he told it the way it is because he wasn't politically correct. And so when people think they have to parse every word, oh, and I can't think about this, that is what's going to drive people crazy and it's going to further divide culturally this country. But I am so sick of the Republicans using the phrase cancel culture

to somehow victimize the Republican Party. Of course they're going to... You know, part of the problem, and I realize, Heidi, you're a recovering senator. But, you know, let's not talk about this in terms of Republicans and Democrat and who's going to win a seat in the Senate or the House or anything like that. Let's talk about it

differently. David Schor, your previous guess. He was canceled because he linked, he tweeted out a link to a Princeton political scientist who happens to be black who wrote about the effects of violent versus nonviolent protests in the 1960s on elections. David Shore got fired because of that. You know, this is what we're talking about.

Data. We need to... He just tweeted out. We need to have a different kind of conversation and it's not one where you're looking to bounce people. We're looking for the wrong perpetrator. The wrong... Like you take teen vogue, right? They shouldn't have fired her. Fuck up. Well, it's people who don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, okay. Well, the young woman who lost her job. Yes, her name is Alexey McCammon. I've seen her many times on MSNBC. And she's lovely. She's 27. Right. Okay, she just got a great job. Well, lost a great job. Editor of Teen Vogue.

And because she tweeted in high school. This is high school. And I have a list of some of the tweets. Now, you know, Some of them, you bandwagoning homo, ha, ha, ha, you're so gay, and laugh my ass off. I mean, really?

Yeah. We're canceling people for this. Whose fault is it, that she does? It's team bog's fault. Can I just say something? People talk shit in private. We can't legislate that away. I don't think this woman is a homofold.

There's also a woman of color. For fuck's sake. We have a little common sense. People talk shit about each other in private. Right. I don't, I'm not disputing that. I'm saying everybody's like, oh, all the people out there who are exercising their economic

right to say, I'm not going to support that product because I don't agree with what you stand for. That's your economic right. Teen Vogue should have said, look, that happened a long time ago, that's ridiculous. In high school. I know, but they are so afraid of any kind of hundred people. It's like buck it up.

You know, corporate America needs to stop buying into this stuff and just accept, right. Right. You're right. You're right. Corporate somebody has to have so balls. Corporate America is not interested in doing that, but there is, I think we also have to look at the kind of

ideology of wokeness, and it really is like all of the fire and brimstone, all of the damnation of Christianity without any possibility of forgiveness or salvation. It is a warped ideology, and I think it's taking the place of religion in many people's lives, because it's

this total picture. It is starkly right and wrong and it is delusional and it needs to be engaged at the corporate level but also at the individual level this is the flip side of if you hear people making really stupid shitty Asian American jokes you also have to call out people who are saying everybody is a racist everything is a racist

or what you said when you were in high school defines you when you're an adult and if you learned anything from the previous guest the small sliver of people who are out there on Twitter causing this trouble the wokeness is not a big political movement. It is very big. It's getting exaggerated. It's big in publishing. It's big in universities. It's big in corporate America. Yeah.

Right? That's because they don't want to take a risk to actually publish something. University presidents are the worst. They don't want any controversy on universities. It's like, well, we can't have that person. Well, you know what? You're a university. You should have all views presented and protect people when they come on your campus. I feel like we're in... This is a very nice.

This is like the United Nations, and then the world outside doesn't give a shit. So, I mean, we need to figure out ways to engage people who are like, no, I am hurt when I hear something or, you know, when somebody says something that offends me, then that's the equivalent of violence. This is part of the problem. Words are not the equivalent of violence,

and we need to get back to a robust understanding that these things are... That the number of people who sit in that space are very minimal, and those people are exploited in the kind of era of we want to not to politicize how you feel kind of era. So my argument... You're not saying this as Republicans are just running this.

No, because I think it happens on both sides. The war on Christmas is just like wokeness, right? It is. Of course, there's snowflakes too. Yeah. But they don't control the media the way these brats do. That's the problem. I don't think it was Republicans

who got election. There's not a lot of Republicans at Teen Vogue or something nice. And I never thought I would live in an era. I remember watching movies about the 50s and the blacklist era when people would whisper that you were a communist and all it took was somebody informing

on you and saying, oh, they saw you at a rally or at some peace march and you were branded and your career was over or you were on the blacklist. people go to parties now and they're like, they don't want to talk. They're like, can I talk? I don't know your girlfriend.

She might be woke. Really? I'm not making this up. People, this informant thing, it's not just what you do, it's what you don't report. That's another way the goalpost moved. I was reading about this guy,

Winston Marshall, the banjo player in Mumford and Sons. Okay. I remember when they were a thing for about the time it took to take a piss. This guy tweeted out that he liked a book. It's a book called Unmast. I never heard of it. You never heard of it. It's apparently not favorable to Antifa,

so it's criticizing Antifa. Okay, people write books. He tweeted out, finally had the time to read your important book. You're a brave man. To the author. Now he has to step away. Everyone's always stepping away from the band. Oh, my God.

And this is his apology. Again, so Soviet. Over the past few days, I have come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed. What? Would you hit somebody over the head with it? I have offended not only a lot of people I don't know, but also those closest to me, including my bandmates.

What a bunch of pussies they must be. And for that, I am truly sorry. It's so Stalin-esque. It's so, you know what? How about I can read what I want? I'm a musician. Don't worry. It won't happen again.

But he would have said that. And, you know, but this is also creeping into legislation. In Texas, the governor and the Senate are poised to pass a law that would basically make social, content moderation on social media illegal because they're saying that religious people are being banned from Twitter and Facebook. In Colorado, people are trying to ban hate speech legislators. This all creeps in. It's not simply the private sector.

And we are in a paroxysm of a contraction of free speech. And this is something you were talking about being a classic liberal. I think this is something libertarians, liberals, and conservatives can all agree on. You need free speech. Last word, Heidi. Last word. South Dakota was going to sign a course. South Dakota was good.

The governor, Christy Noem, was going to sign a transgender bill. And by the way, you know, saying they can't play in girls' sports, really. Like, that's the biggest issue ever in South Dakota, apparently. Because it's getting a lot of attention across the board. Guess what? Amazon came in, they were going to put a plant there, and they said, you know, we might.

Not like, all of a sudden, Christy Noem gets religion, that maybe that isn't the right thing to do. So let's see if she signs a bill. And this is where that use of economic power can actually be used to the good, is my point. I wish we had time to talk about that issue. But I don't. Maybe next time. All right, thank you, panel.

Time for New rules. New rules, everybody, new rules. All right, new rule, now that a new HBO documentary claims that the founder of QAnon, Q himself, is actually Ron Watkins, a 30-something in-cell who lives in Japan, surrounded by comic books and a doll for a girlfriend. QAnon followers. have to admit they spent the last two years

worshipping someone they would have beat up in high school. Congratulations, geniuses. You made a god out of the Grubhubb Delivery Guy. Neuro, this company that promises to deliver Viagra discreetly to your door has to tell me, what's the alternative? A marching band forms into the shape of a penis and shows up outside my house?

It's a box in the mail. What's not discreet? The pharmacist at CVS shouting after you, Remember if there's any problems with your erections, call me. New Rule, make sure your symbolic gesture doesn't just confuse everybody. I'm sure the red face paint of these protesters in Chile has a deep meaning, but I can't help but think of my grandmother trying to put on lipstick in the car. New Rule, stop using the phrase plain vanilla.

Vanilla is a flavor, just like any other. It comes from the vanilla bean. You know what other flavor comes from a bean? Chocolate. But you don't hear the mainstream media using the term plain vanilla. plain chocolate, but plain vanilla, that's somehow okay? Well, it isn't okay. I'm Tucker Carlson, good night.

Trying to get my Tucker face. New Rule, someone has to tell Lexa Voss, who teaches sheep cuddling seminars on her farm. It all might seem more appealing if this sheep didn't have a look on her face that says, oh boy, I know where this is headed. And finally, New Rule, if you believe in the philosophy of equality of out,

then you really shouldn't have watched the Grammys last Sunday. Because the Grammys, aside from the usual award show, virtue signaling, are still largely about the idea that certain people do music better than others, and it's okay to reward them for it. That's called meritocracy, and it's the opposite of guaranteed outcomes. A quality of outcomes, as opposed to a quality of opportunity. We used to call that by another name, trophy syndrome, a world that was

a world that was created back in the 90s where everybody every kid gets a trophy no matter how good or bad they are at something well the result of that kind of thinking is that American kids now have a totally deluded and unearned belief in their charm, brains, and talent

it's not only that the entire generation wants to be famous it's that they think not being famous isn't fair if you think I'm exaggerating let me quote from this article in Roller Rolling Stone magazine last year lamenting how streaming has not given us a quality of outcomes in the music

industry. Oh, the Grammys would look quite different if we followed this template. The article tells us that more than 1.6 million, million artists released songs between January 2019 and July 2020. 40,000 tracks a day on Spotify. And yet, Rolling Stone complains today's streaming land, looks a lot like the music industry used to. A small class of artists see not just the majority of activity, but damn near all of it. Yes, these are called the good ones.

I mean, yes, of course, an occasional big talent can fall through the cracks, but in general it's simply a case that most people who try their hand at music write the songs that don't make the whole world sing. Rolling Stone complains that, quote, nearly all the streams went to artists in the top 10%, with the bottom 90%

pulling in just 0.6% of streams. Whoa, let me get this straight. Talented artists people like or listen to more than untalented ones they don't. Stop the presses. Yes, that's meritocracy. If people don't like your song, your mommy can't make them listen to it.

You know, you know why 99% of artists aren't getting heard? Because music is hard and most people suck at it. For more deep, details Google reality. Rolling Stone actually writes the sentence. In a perfect world, the bottom 1% of artists would get 1% of activity.

No, they wouldn't. That's a stupid world I don't want to live in. Who taught you this nonsense? And when you whine, that streaming hasn't just upheld the gap between music's haves and have-nots. It's widened it. You're making my case for me.

Because streaming allows the public to sample everybody. there's no more gatekeepers. You can't complain. No one heard your song because no label would sign you. We tore that wall down. And the result was the same. Some musicians are have-nots

because, yes, they may have a voice, but we have ears. It reminds me of the early audition rounds of the old American Idol where contestants are all attitude and image as if to say, can we not focus so much on the talent and just skip the part to where the part I'm going to get to be idol.

72% of Gen Z say they'd like to be an online celebrity and 54% of Gen Z and millennials say they would become an influencer given the opportunity. You know, if it wasn't too much work like making a sex date. Speaking of which,

Paris Hilton just made a return to the limelight, revealing that the ditsy party girl we knew back in the day was just her playing a character. and that there really was more to her than sex tapes, driving drunk, carrying around a little dog, and saying that's hot.

I mean, what about her work on the Human Genome Project? You know what? Any jokes I did about Paris? I don't feel bad. Sorry, not sorry. I just can't. I can't be living in this time when we're madly on the hunt

for anything with the slightest whiff of white privilege and then feel bad for Paris Hilton. Quite the reverse. Maybe Paris is the one, who owes us an apology. For being patient zero, for today's vapid, entitled, famous for nothing

culture. She kind of birthed the world where every 15-year-old with a phone aspires to be an influencer. She's the face that launched the thousand little shits. Paris led directly to the Kardashians and then to housewives and teen moms and Heidi's and Snookies and a

generation of young girls who look up to the role models who manage to turn an unenthusiastic blowjob into an empire. Young people who think talent, my talent is being me. And you wanting to live my life. Kylie Jenner is a billionaire based on her ability to sit near a pool. For the generations who are always on and on about this is my voice and I have something

to say, an awful lot of that something is about lip gloss. All right, that's our show. I want to thank my guest, Nick Gillespie, Heidi Hyde Kemp, and David Shore. You were a great crowd. I thank you very much. We'll see you next week. One more week, Miami. 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.