Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #564: Ben Sheehan, Thomas Frank, Nancy MacLean

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

Bill’s guests are Ben Sheehan, Thomas Frank, and Nancy MacLean. (Originally aired 4/30/21) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-month series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Thank you. Thank you. Ah, you're so kind. How you doing? Thank you for masking up. Thank you. Thank you.

And how about a hand for our... Thank you. Save it. How about a hand for our producer, Dean Johnson, who did the warm up? Because that was usually... you know, the regular warm-up guy's sick, so he did it. That was fucking painful, wasn't it? I mean, thank you, Dean.

Anyway, you don't know what I'm talking about here at home, but I know why you're happy and probably at home. We've reached 100 days of the Biden administration. And it's like, it's like America was on a three-month juice cleanse. I feel so much lighter. I mean, it's amazing how much Trump was in there. and yeah

and Joe celebrated with his favorite beer old malarkey but he's got a lot to celebrate the economy is surging growth 6.4 percent now close a lot of this because we were stuck last year but even for any

time in one quarter 6.4 percent this is this is Fox News's worst nightmare they convince everybody Biden is a socialist and then, oh shit, it's working. To give you an idea how rapidly

this economy is moving, take a chart of the Oscar ratings and turn it upside down. It's just... Oh, yeah, very low... Sad. Ten million people. It used to get, like, Super Bowl numbers.

Ten million. Like, this show's gotten almost half of that. This... One of... and one of the winners you know, went up there and did that thing they always do. We thanked his agent and God and then told us kids and go to bed kids and the babysitter texted back. They already did.

Nobody liked this show, I think. But the economists say the surge in the economy is driven by you people, the consumer, the consumer, ladies and gentlemen, people are spending, spending. It's like we're all strippers

and the government made it rain, and now we can't wait to hit Jimmy Chuse. You know, I mean, it's... And I can see it. I'm on the drive-in today. I saw a packed car dealership. I saw a long line for an open house. And there were two people at Sears. So cruel, Sears. No, I tried to give a panhandler five bucks today, and he told me to make a more serious offer. I tell you, but Joe, did you see his speech? gave us what really is the State of the Union speech's first one. Did you watch? Not you people.

Well, you did. Okay. I thought he was good. I mean, he hadn't been a member of Congress since 2008. A lot of new faces. A lot of new names. He thought AOC was the active ingredient in weed. But it did pretty well.

22 million people watched. It's interesting. The older Democrats saw it on TV. The millennials watched it on their phone. And the Q... I can't even... The QAnon folks listen to it over the 5G in their vaccine. Oh, yes.

By the way, the speech, very COVID-safe. Joe's speech, oh, yes. The big question people had was, should we stay six feet away from Ted Cruz or an additional six feet to the six feet we'd normally have been spending away? I get, Ted. Ted Cruz, during the speech, fell asleep.

They caught him. Of course, you know, Ted, the liar. He said he wasn't asleep. He was protesting wokeness. Oh, yeah. The Republicans, they were not happy with your speech. He did not give the speech they wanted him to make. So they were pissed off.

Ted was pissed. Lauren Bobert, you know, this nut? One of the new Republicans in Congress, it's from Colorado. Oh, wow. This is a loon, like on a Marjorie Taylor Green level. during the speech she dramatically unfurled

one of those mylar blankets you know those kids in cage silver blankets I don't even really know the point of this protest so I'm just going to take the high road and say everybody's entitled to their opinion

but do not ask me ever to respect prop comedy what does that even mean mylar blanket But yeah, maybe she was pissed about masks. It was, like I say, a very COVID-safe speech. Minimal audience. Mandatory masks.

Everybody spaced apart. You know what? It was a lot like what we do here. Except Joe's new rules cost $2 trillion each. Oh, yeah. It was... He talked a lot about money. What we're going to spend.

Two trillion. He talked about that we've already spent for COVID relief, and then another two trillion he wants for infrastructure, and then he's got a family's plan. Another two trillion. The entire federal budget is

$4 trillion, and this is on top of that. Boy, thank God we got Mexico to pay for that wall, huh? I don't know. I'm sure a lot of Americans are saying, you know what, if you put the Democrats in charge, they spend all your money, and if you put Trump in charge,

you get a disease. It's like having to change. between marriage and dating. All right, we got a great show. We have Thomas Frank and Nancy McLean. But first up, he is the author of OMG. I'm just going to say it. Oh, my God, what the fuck does the Constitution actually say?

He was polite enough to spell it out. Ben Sheehan is back with us, Ben. Simhala Ben. Good to see you again. All right. Yes, we can say it here on HBO. Oh, my God, what the fuck. series of books on what the fuck, and we sure need them. I mean, the first one was kind of an

owner's manual about the Constitution, so you're really a good guy to be here this week because the census came out, so we have a lot of new information, and there's also bills, I mean, the Democrats of trying to get D.C. to be the 51st state. Where is the Constitution on that? So on the census, the Constitution in Article 1, Section 2 says we have to count the population every 10 years, and we do that with the census. We started in 70, And we've been doing it every decade since. And the reason that we do that is to do two things. One originally was to decide how much tax each state would pay

because everyone paid an even amount. But we really use it to decide how many representatives each state gets for the House. And just off of the information, this... How many was it like back in 17? So 65 was the first size of the House. And today we have 435. But how much did each represent?

So 30,000. 30,000. 30,000. Today it's 760. So one person... One congressman representative 30,000. What is it today? 762,000.

Wow. And James Madsen actually tried to cap it at 50,000. It's one of the amendments that was in the original Bill of Rights, but didn't make it in. But now we're 15 times beyond what he wanted it to be. Okay, so what, but tell me about the D.C. thing. Sure. Because I've read, now Joe Mentioned today, I think it was just today, came on. And, of course, the Democrats need 60 votes.

They only have 50, so they're short anyway. It doesn't really matter. But Joe Mention is a Democrat. He's the one they over. always need. Joe Biden is only the second most powerful Joe. Yeah, it's true. In Washington. Right. So he said he would never

do that. So why are we talking about it? Well, yeah, I mean, you're right. You need to get around the filibuster to make D.C. estate. But in the Constitution, it says that Congress can set the size of D.C. can't be more than 100 square miles. But this current bill,

it doesn't make D.C. a state as is. It shrinks the size of the federal government to about two square miles. And and the other 66 square miles would become a state. Okay, so the Republicans say, why not just, I learned a new word, retro session, right. Put it back to where it, whence it came, which was Maryland.

Yes. To create the Capitol, they took a little chunk out of Virginia and Maryland, right? So what's the deal with that? I mean, then they would be represented, you know, and nobody lives in the area that actually the people work in. Nobody lives at the Capitol. Well, right, exactly. The two-square mile area for the Capitol, there's very few, if any, people that live there. So why is... But Maryland would have to agree to it. So in the Constitution, the state legislature in Maryland would have to agree to take that 66 square miles and 700,000 residents back, and they've said that they don't want that.

What about Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico, well, I should say support for D.C. statehood among people who live in D.C. is like 85%. They did a referendum in 2016. Puerto Rico's a lot closer divided. It's a very bare majority. But obviously you don't have the same thing. Of the people there who want it? Of the people, yeah, very slight majority. They've done six. Describe their status now because America was an empire.

Right. Some people would say it still is because we have territory. Which is a weird thing to have. Because when you own territory, you kind of own the people. Right. So either make them citizens or, you know, let them be their own citizens of somewhere else. It's incredibly fucked up. And it plays into this long history of, honestly.

It's very anachronistic, is it not? It's really messed up because you have now four and a half million people who pay taxes and they participate, you know, they join the military, but they don't get representatives in Congress. You're talking about not just Puerto Rico. No, you also have Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the northern Mariana Islands. Why do we have Guam?

It seems wrong. It seems very unwoke. It's about a... It's about 100. Where are the woke people on this? I mean, I'm not even a wokester, but I mean, but that's actually the third... I mean, after Puerto Rico, that's the next most populated territory. But basically, you would have...

Puerto Rico, they are citizens, as we know. Yeah, and there are over, there's about 3.3 million citizens. It's odd to me that you can be citizens and yet not be a state already. Right. I mean, you know, a lot of the states that we have began as territories within the, you know, the 40, the continental United States. But Puerto Rico has, they've had a referendum six times. And the last few times, they've had a bare majority for statehood. The most convincing one was this past year 2020. What is that in human nature, do you think, Ben, that people very often vote against their own freedom?

I've seen it in Scotland, too. Scotland has referendums. And they go, nope, we don't want to be governed by us. Right. Well, I mean, the history between the United States government in Puerto Rico is dark. And there's a lot that we don't teach in our schools, and it's a really complicated history.

Even more so. Even more so. Right, exactly. And they've made themselves known, and they voted in the last decade, there have been three referendums. And they clearly say that they want to be a state with a bare majority, but it takes an act of Congress.

And right now, Congress hasn't decided to act. Okay, so what about the... Now, we've heard a lot about the term court packing. I remember this from eighth grade history when FDR, that's when I heard about it. 1937, yeah. Yeah, in FDR. I guess he was frustrated in the same way many presidents are when the court doesn't rule in their favor. So he wanted to add justices.

It looked like a paragraph. But then in this recent run-up to the controversy, we've learned that, well, it's not unconstitutional, right? I mean, the Constitution does not say how many justices there have. We could have 100. We could. In fact, we started with six and then went down to five, and then six, and then seven, and then nine, and then ten, down to seven, and then back to nine. Like few heffner's girlfriends in the later years. It's a whole other story.

But we've been at nine since 1869, and again, all it takes, like a lot of things to change our government, all it takes is an act from Congress to change the number. And so the proposal is to give four more additional justices to make it 13. But that would look like a paragraph. Not that they don't kind of deserve it because of the way Mitch McConnell and the Republican Congress completely fucked the Democrats

in a way that was completely unprecedented when they wouldn't... I mean, I kind of have... I mean, I don't like the idea of politicizing the court. On the other hand, that is one of those things that, like, cannot stand. That they denied a president. a pick? Because that's fundamental

rules. You broke the fundamental rules. When you break the fundamental rules... And it goes back to the idea, it's like, why do we have a court with lifetime appointments? You know, the original intent was to make it so it's really non-partisan. That's not in there either. What? In the Constitution. Lifetime appointments is in the Constitution. That is in the Constitution.

That is in the Constitution. Ding! Right. But the idea is to have it be these unelected people whose allegiance is to the Constitution and to federal laws. And so having this sort of even-handed, balanced court is kind of core to the whole original idea. Yes. Lifetime appointment is bad because I see, you know, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

we know that the Democrats are mad at her because... She didn't step down, yeah. Right. And it's their fault. Their plan was she doesn't die. That's not a plan. No. Now Stephen Breyer is the next liberal. He's 82. Right.

And we heard that when Ginsburg was alive, Obama had her to lunch. Right. And kind of, you know, without saying, hey, how's your health? Right. Where you see yourself for the next five years. Now they're doing it with Stephen Breyer. There's this, and who wants that in your life? People like kind of hinting, hmm.

You should quit so that, because you're going to die soon and we need to replace you. Crazy subject, a lot of the thin air. What's your cholesterol, Steve? You don't want this, right? Right. And why do we need a lifetime appointment anyway? What if it was 18 years? Well, it's been proposed by constitutional scholars.

And the idea is you have an 18-year period on the court, but then you go down to the circuit court. And so you sort of shift through it. So there's sort of workarounds. It's unclear if that's actually constitutional. Some people say it is, some say it isn't. But, yeah, the idea of lifetime appointments is putting a lot of power in the hands of very few people.

Okay. So you mentioned the census. Yeah. I see, and this is not a surprise, the people are moving out of the northeast and they're moving to the south and the west. What is the big picture long-term repercussions for that? So you had

six states gain representatives, gain seats, and seven states most of those states. I mean, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Oregon, North Carolina, and others, but it's a net gain for, I guess, red states, and blue states lost seats. And just by

the reapportionment, it's cutting the Democrats lead in the House. Right now it's a four-seat advantage to two. Before gerrymandering, before redistricting. So just the data from Monday means that it's now a two-seat advantage in the House for Democrats. All right. Thanks for coming by. You always have the answers.

It's like a great game of jeopardy. Well, I don't mind you out too much. All right. Ben, she in. Let's beat our panel. How you doing? How are you? Good to see you again.

All right. She's the author of Democracy and Change, the Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America. McLean back with us. Great to do that. And he is the author of The People Know, a brief history of anti-populism. Thomas Frank.

Great to see you. Okay, so I mentioned there in monologue that the speech Biden made was really not the speech I thought the Republicans wanted him to make, because when they gave the rebuttal, it looked like it'd been written before. They, you know, they always

want him to fall into the woke trap, and he just never takes the base. Right? Because the only way they win, politically, is on cultural issues. Because he really is being the blue-collar president. And I know this is a big subject of both of yours, but you write books about it. Do you think he's succeeding about that? Winning back the blue-collar?

It seemed like to me he was. You're asking me like... Yes, with the speech and all what he's proposing. And I feel like this is what people like you have been saying for years. Yes. Yes. I was very... I was really pleased by what... you know, what he said in that speech.

Right. Come on. He said the middle class built America and the unions built the middle class. Nice going, Joe. And defended the police. He said, wait, he also said health care is not a privilege. It's a right.

Fantastic. Nice going, Joe. Look, there's, you know, there's... Look, and something else I want to say here. Joe Biden's career as a senator, which, you know, spanned many decades. For someone like me, that was, it was not very promising. Right? I didn't have a lot of high hopes for the Biden administration. A lot of people did not like it when he, no.

He was a deficit hawk, among other things. Well, that's gone. Look at what he's doing. Austerity, all that Obama, you know, let's have a grand bargain with the Republicans. Gone. It's fantastic for someone like, I'm very pleased. Now, the big question, of course, Bill, is he actually going to follow through? When he finally does, look, so far, the business community, corporate America, they can handle gigantic Keynesian spending, that's not a huge threat to them.

But when he actually goes and does something like the Pro Act or the minimum wage, they're going to start pushing back. And he's going to get some resistance. Is he going to be able to follow through? Is he really going to do it? We're going to find out. I certainly agree on the follow-through, and I wish he'd spoken more about the For the People Act,

which is critical to saving democracy in this country. But I was really impressed as one of those people who was not excited to have him as the frontrunner, but I think he is doing a really exciting job, and I thought that was a terrific speech. And I think there's a reason for that, though, too. I think the country has changed, and Joe Biden understands that we're at a pivot point. We either save democracy by showing that it can address the needs of people, that it can do things that people look to government to do, or we're going to lose it. We're going to slide into authoritarianism. And given the gerrymandering

and all the kind of rigging that you were just talking with Ben about, that's the kind of question we faced. These are not ordinary elections coming out of. us. And he really grasped that moment. And I think that that is fantastic. And also he's been pushed by the progressive base who did the work to get him elected. The only way, I mean, if you watch the speech, you know, there were things that you, even 10 years ago, I don't think a bipartisan group like that, half of them would not applaud for. That shows you where we are. Yes. Or at least where those motherfuckers in Washington, how much they hate each other. Yes. Cutting child poverty in half.

Complete silence. Right. Yeah, I mean, I saw that with Obama, too. It's like, really, you can't applaud for that? You hate these people this much? The only way I think to change that is to change the voters. Those Republicans have nothing to lose by not applauding anything because their voters hate so much.

Yeah. So you can't get the politicians, you can't get the politicians to stop hating because they're doing it as a representative of the voters. But you can't get the voters. But you can get the voters to stop hating by doing the kind of stuff I think he's starting to do.

But I think before we blame the voters who bear their share of blame, I guess you could say, I think we also have to look at the donors. The donors have been driving this, the hard-right donors to the Republican Party, above all the Coke network, but the whole rotten mess of them,

they have set up in their terms the incentive structure. An incentive structure that rewards exactly the behavior that we're talking about where they will not compromise on anything. They think compromise is a dirty word. And they agitate, and all their allied organizations,

and media like Fox News, agitate the base into thinking that this is a do-or-die war for their tribe. And that they are under constant assault from us and that we hate them and we disrespect them and we disregard them. And they get them into such a stress state that they become aggressive and attack. So yes, the voters, but the donors are the ones we need to. And some of that is true.

There is a lot of... You write about that a lot. A lot of looking down, right? I can't hear you. In during COVID, I've lost my hearing or something. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was the smell, but okay. You write about that, the looking down-on problem.

Yeah, that's, you know. Yeah, the sort of utopia. I call it a utopia of scolding. Because the people who do the looking down are sort of, you know, you're affluent, highly educated, suburbanites. The kind of people that I and you, we know these people very, very well. They tend to be, these days, they tend to be Democratic. They're very well off. They're, as I said, highly educated. And they regard the world, they regard, well, let me put it this way.

Trumpism was an incredible shock to them. And their reaction has been to, you know, lapse into this kind of scolding, you know, this sort of culture where liberalism is about your personal virtue. Being a liberal is about being a better person and looking down on all of these people who don't get it. And there's something really repugnant about it. But I call it a utopia of scolding because these people have nothing to lose. You know, Trump cut their taxes. You know, they're getting richer by the minute during this our COVID. Well, James Carville gave an interview to our friend Sean Elling over at Vox this week, and it got a lot of pickup because Sean finally got James to come out of his show and say what he really means. I'm joking. He does that all the time.

Okay. Anyway, all right. Here's Carville. He said, Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It's hard to talk to anybody today who doesn't say this,

but they don't want to say it out loud. Well, actually, Jim, we've been saying it out loud on this show for quite some time. But I get your point because they'll get clobbered or canceled. This too cool for school shit

doesn't work, and we have to stop it. And I feel like the battle in the party is that Joe does not get sucked in to this bullshit, but the party does. Sometimes it seems like it's all they do. I mean, and I always say on this show, you are always part of the party of.

No matter what you do, we only have two tribes in this country. The Oscars, you are the party of the Democrats. You just are. Whatever you do, that's the way America is going to see it. Whatever crazy shit happens on the left, you're going to be, and that's, of course, why they gave the rebuttal speech. they gave. They gave it to the speech.

They wanted him to make where he was woke and it wasn't that speech. Yeah, they missed it, right? But again, that's how they win. And here's some other Carville. He says, you get the sense that people in faculty lounges, in fancy colleges, use a different

language that ordinary people. He mentioned Latinx, which I've mentioned a couple of times on this show, and people argued with me, no, we need that word. Yeah. And then the polling keeps showing, no. No one likes it. No one uses it, this is your insanity. And it obscures the fact, this kind of craziness,

obscures the fact that the Democrats did give people Obamacare, finally at least started to solve the health care thing, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saved the auto industry, the trillion-dollar tax cut that Trump gave, got back to the middle class, most of Biden's been, you know, they actually do the way. work and they don't get the credit. And the Democrats I know, you know, maybe different ones being

in the D.C. region. But the Democrats that I know talk about those things. They're out there. They're on the doors. They're on the phone. They're doing the work. And they know how to talk to people in plain language. I mean, I come from a private university with a faculty lounge. I don't like jargon from my students, from my colleagues, anywhere in the world. But I think it's also really important that we maybe not fall into the terms that our opponents have set. You know, the right since the New Deal, and Tom, you know this as well as I, have been calling Democrats arrogant. Errogant, because we let workers speak up to bosses and have a say in how their work relations should run, right? They started the trope of the liberal media in the time of the civil rights movement to discredit northern reporters who are coming down and telling the truth about the South.

That's when they started saying don't trust the liberal media. So they've been pushing this line for a long time. So are there, you know, like word choices I would find unfortunate or something? Yeah, but also there's a lot of pain in this country. There are a lot of people who've been stepped on for a long time. George Floyd was stepped on for nine minutes as we know and that woke up the country That kind of woke we need to be woken up. I believe that we need that woken up I mean, yes, we don't need people. But do we need to be woken up 24-7? I think that's like the problem people have with the Oscars Well, nobody likes self-righteousness, right? And maybe I just did some so don't hate me. But I mean, so yeah, I mean, but I think we all need to laugh at ourselves, right? And not Well, also, something, it's an industry about entertainment,

and this show was always about entertainment, and they put on a show what was like, we dare you to be entertained. We dare you. No jokes. No jokes. No songs. Not even any clips of when we used to have fun.

Fuck you, eat your piece. And this is, you know, ubiquity for any cause, I think. doesn't help. But I have to take your word for it because I didn't watch because I haven't watched it since last February. So I didn't see the Oscars because I didn't see the movies, right? And I don't know, I think a lot of us felt like that. Like we haven't done anything normal, like go to the movies with friends. So why would we get excited about watching the Oscars? I think it's a blip. Can I just throw out there that there's basically two different models of how you do liberalism in this country? And one of them is what I call the populist model referring to back when we had

three parties in this country. One of them was called the populist party. It was a left-wing farmer labor. Sorry? When was this? The 1890s? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you remember. Come on. Good time. But anyhow, the populist tradition, which believes that... Is that the gay

90s? No, isn't that what they called it? The gay 90s? At the time, no, it was a terrible depression. This was like... Well, in New York, they called it the gay 90s. Okay. It was a time when the, you know, when the economy was was shrinking people.

It was awful. Strikes, marches on Washington, all this kind of thing. Anyhow, there's two ways of doing this. One, you build a mass movement of ordinary people. To do that, you can't be some kind of judgmental prick that goes around using this kind of jargon and talking about what a fine and noble individual you are.

The other model is ideological purity, where your politics are a kind of fashion accessory. And that's what you're describing. And that is, well, to use, Everybody's favorite word, toxic. You know, this is no way to go forward. If that's what the Democratic Party was doing, you know, forget it. And it wouldn't be so hard to fix this.

I mean, in the rebuttal speech, the Republicans picked their one black senator, Tim Scott, who gets a lot of work on TV. Yeah. And he said America is not a racist country. And, you know, within 24 hours, Biden agreed with that. Kamala Harris agreed with that. I think it's a silly paradigm to put to begin with

because it's not an either or it's not like a pregnancy test. Look, it's blue, we're not racist. I mean, but, you know, Tim Scott, by his own account. He said one time he would pull, he was pulled over seven times in a year.

He said he's been followed chopping. He's the one black Republican Senate. Okay, this is evidence of racism. So plainly, we're a recovering racist country or something. But yeah, I mean, both, both things are true. I felt sorry. I was just going to say, I felt sorry

for the man. I mean, he comes from the party that worked with the tobacco industries to deny the harms of tobacco smoke, then is working with the climate, captured by the fossil fuel industry denying the climate. So he's just the logical next step. And they denied the insurrection. They denied that the election was won. But you'd

think he'd kind of look around and say, how come they keep making me one point? Right. I agree. And I think most America, you know, I mean, I don't think Kamala and Biden are being disingenuous when they agree with that. We're not a... Because they're think of the many millions and millions of people

who are not. And they just don't want to be told all the time every day, come on, you think you're not a racist? Dig a little deeper. Yeah, exactly. But look, this country has a... They're saying, I didn't follow anyone in a store. You know, I didn't pull anybody over.

You know, even if it's my ancestors, that wasn't me either. You know, it's like that kind of thing, like individual versus collective guilt. And I think that's where the kind of professional culture that Tom has critiqued so well comes into play, because it's a kind of a therapeutic model, right, that says that racism is a sin in our hearts or it's something wrong of our thinking process. And it's all on us as individuals to then become virtuous and non-racist or anti-racist. When in fact, these structures have been there since the founding of the country.

They've been perpetuated in different ways. The wealth inequality at this point is the biggest factor in racism and harm to African-American lives. And so we have to change the conversation. But fortunately, that work has already started with the movement for Black Lives, with the response to George Floyd. But I think we have to kind of keep that conversation going and also make an exit ramp for white people from the notion that they are trapped with these other folks. And, you know, I think the way to do that is precisely by understanding that this is a country of both things. It has a very racist history, and it has a really impressive anti-racist history that starts with the abolition. And we're both, and we can't.

But it's also, but you can extend that in all sorts of other ways. This is, in some ways, the most democratic country in the world, the most egalitarian people that I have ever met. And it's at the same time, this country that has this profound, has always had, since the big, beginning, this profound suspicion of democracy, you know, this fear of the lower orders rising up in their insolence and, you know, outvoting us or doing some dreadful thing. And you see this all the time around us now. But both things happen in the same country. It's wrong to try to, like you said, you said, a pregnancy test. I was going to say like the, you know, before the throne of God sifting out our souls, you know. All right. Well, with Biden polling so well,

I've noticed that the right-wing media has had to ramp up the lying. It's interesting. because, well, I mean, we thought we were over this a little bit, I guess, when Trump left. But this is, show this the meat one. This is real from Foxwood. This is Fox News. This is not a joke. Cut 90% of red meat from tight. This is what they're claiming Biden is going to make you do.

Max, four pounds per year, one burger per month. I mean, that's Fox News. That's a major news outlet. I would become a Republican if that really happened. It's what they do, though, right? They activate the reptilian brain. You know, our tribe is under threat. So another one, the...

A burger eaters. Fourth of July canceled. And these are real. Look at this one. Kamala Harris, migrant children giving copy of VP's book. They're apoplectic about this that Kamala gave... That we were giving out her book. It's a children's book.

It's a real book called Superheroes are everywhere at taxpayer expense at the border. First of all, we did... I said, find out how much this would actually cost, seeing how mad they were. We did the math. It would, for the number of kids who came in and the price of the book, even not buying in bulk, it would only cost $272,000. What a horrible thing to give these pork-bestraggled children a little, a book, to say, here's a gift.

You've made it to America. No. You know what? I mean, I do not spare any powder with the Democrats, as you both know, but, man, the Republicans have not given one inch on being the most dickish. unnecessarily assholeish people. I mean,

anyway, so they're just flat out on Fox News lying about this was all last week. Would you like to see some of the ones they have for next week?

Oh, because it's just getting worse. It's just getting worse. I mean, look at this one. Trump Border Walt to be melted down for a giant statue of Colin Kaepernick.

That's... They made that out. Hunter Biden traded White House secrets for hit-off vape pen. Fauci, babies in the womb must wear masks. No. National anthem before NASCAR to be replaced by acknowledgement of privilege. That would piss off Kansas, wouldn't it, Tom? Biden looting to be renamed Justice.

shopping. And Dems, in all depictions of Jesus, crown of thorns to be replaced for pussy hat. Pussy hat. Okay. I'm a little loopy. Okay, so when I used to live in New York, I lived there in the

90s when Giuliani was mayor, and there was a saying, Giuliani time. You remember that? You never heard that? Amadu Diallo, right? Yeah, well, I mean, He was a tough-on-crime mayor, and the cops loved him. And when they would do some bad shit to somebody before they started, it was like,

it's Giuliani Time. You don't remember that. I've never lived in New York. They... I'm from Kansas. It wasn't the national news. It was the gay 90s. Forget it.

But anyway, Giuliani... It was bad police violence would come... Giuliani Time came to Giuliani's apartment this week. The FBI, this is, I just wanted people to understand how unprecedented this is for a former, just a lawyer, let alone a former prosecutor, mayor of New York, the president's personal lawyer. And the, I mean, this is the scary shit. I mean, it was 6 a.m. He was just getting in his coffin. For them to, you know, this is the no-law, you know, just, can you, this is when you shit in your pants. literally, I mean, you know, and took his phones, and they're investigating.

Now, you know, Rudy would say they hate me for being loyal. Yes, loyal to the horrible president and a scummy guy, so I can't feel too sorry for about him. But unprecedented, yes. Now, is this unprecedented for one of two reasons? Is it political payback? Is this politics? Or is it because what Giuliani and Trump did was unprecedented? I would say that.

I would, too. I don't know how unprecedented. this is. I mean, come on, the Arding administration, the Nixon administration, there's a lot of those guys went to jail. But did they involve themselves with other countries? I feel like they did?

No, I'm just, I'm following your train of thought. Yes, I feel like we play dirty politics. But we used to always just have one rule. No ringers. Keep it in the family. Do what you do. But don't bring in the guy

from Russia. You know, This seemed like... Now, look, a lot of the stuff we found out, we were finding out, was reported erroneously. You mean Russia gay? Yes. There are things about that. But the basic idea... See, my theory is that we forget

that Trump was both an idiot and crazy. Really? I feel like this is very important. Like, an idiot is... I didn't know health care was constantly. complicated. No, what, that's an idiot. Or like, I can charm Kim Jong-un. That's an idiot. Crazy is like doing your crimes in public, which he did. And that doesn't compute. So we, like, thought it had to be more of a conspiracy. It may turn out that most of it really was just what he did in public,

because it's so insane that he was Russia, if you're listening, and when he admitted he fired Comey. When I look back, I'm like, wow, we live through this? Yeah. Sometimes you wake up and and you're like, it was just a few months ago that we had a, the president of the United States was telling us that we just had a massively

unfair election that he should have won. That was in this country. Still hasn't conceded. I know, but he was sitting in the White House saying this shit. Yes. It's hard to really, it kind of boggles the mind. You know, these days I'm so happy to wake up and he's, I'm sorry.

I know. I don't want to sound like it. It seems like... I want to be... The birds are singing. The radio has some news. But I... I'm a cynical guy.

I don't want to say stuff like that. It seems like it was so long ago. It seems like Trump was president in the 50s or the 80s. Except that the people behind him who were getting lots of what they wanted under his administration are not gone.

They're waiting in the wings. And they're still doing the same old stuff. And my own state, you're just talking about gerrymandering, we just heard that with the new state that's coming to North Carolina, our Republicans in North Carolina believe that they can draw the lines such that they will get 10 seats to Democrats, four seats, in a state that's divided 50-50.

Like, this is the kind of rules rigging that they have been doing systematically. They've done it in the 30 states they control that we have to get at least most back from, and they've been doing it at the federal level with all of these other efforts. So I think while America breathes a rightful of, collective sigh of relief about Donald Trump, and I am breathing easier much easier every day like you,

we have to remember that unless we deal with the conditions that enabled him to come to power, we're going to have another one. Well, you can't. You know, there's something that we haven't. You can't deal with the condition that 18, this is a point Carvel made this week, that 18% of the population elects 52 senators.

Yes. You can't deal with that because that's a constitutional. James, I guess. But you can approach it strategically, and that's what the Democrats I know have been talking about in doing, which is doing things like organizing in rural states, which is not just focusing on federal power or local power, but getting out in the states,

contesting for state government, and changing within. Virginia just abolished the death penalty. Virginia's been doing all this great stuff, because ordinary Democrats work their tails off over many election cycles to get us there. Georgia. Look at Georgia. You know, Biden can only do these things because of shoe leather in Georgia in a pandemic because people did close, deep organizing, and now the world is open and we're breathing freely, but we wouldn't be here.

We'd all be, you know, biting our nails again and waking up in misery. No, all that is true, but there's something that we're, there's something that we're overlooking here, and that's sort of been lurking behind all this, which really is that, I mean, there really has been an important historical change. You were talking about James Carville a minute ago. Carville, of course, most famous for getting Bill Clinton elected, you know, a Democrat elected president in 1992. We all celebrated, hey, look, the Democrats are back.

What does Clinton do? Basically, one of the first and most important things he does is NAFTA. You go back and, you know, what I was doing today, I spent a whole lot of time reading Clinton's speech that he gave when he signed NAFTA. And he was basically saying, workers, you're screwed, you have to get used to it. This is a new economy. It's an economy for the highly educated. That's whose prosperity matters.

and we're going to retrain all you people whose lives are ruined. This guy then does away with the welfare system. Remember, they called it welfare reform. Well, he didn't do away with the welfare system. No, he, yes, they abolished it. It was overturned. They have something called TANF now. We still had welfare in this country.

AFDC, whatever you want to call it. Okay. Then he goes around, deregulates Wall Street. Yes, he cut a lot of people up. Deregulates Wall Street some more. Deregulates Wall Street yet again. Okay? Glass Eagle.

He didn't he got rid of Glass. Stegel? Sorry? Glass Stegel? Yes, they overturned that. Yeah. That was one of the many, the many waves. Clinton definitely moved the Democrats to the center.

What's your point? No, he moved the Democrats to the right, and he abandoned us. To the center. Or rightward to the center. You think that's the center? This country didn't want those things. Well. This country didn't want to deregulate Wall Street, deregulate telecoms.

Why did he get elected twice? Why was he? Because the alternatives weren't so good either. And then there was Ross Perrault in the beginning. Yeah, that's right. But it is, going back to the discussion about the South and West, Democrats lost the South, not with the Civil Rights Act, as the legend goes. I mean, they lost in presidential politics after the Civil Rights Act, but some recent research by a wonderful economic historian, Gavin Wright, has shown that it was NAFTA that did in the Democrats at the state level. It was so many Southern states still had Democrats in state houses, in the governor's office, in other state positions.

But NAFTA totally demoralized. PNTR China, which is basically NAFTA applied to, you know. But it looks like Biden is at least talking a talk that was not talked by Obama or by Clinton. In Washington, Bill, just, and I should shut up, I know, I talk way too much. No, no, you're on a talk show. People regard. That's only two of you. People regard these moves that Bill Clinton made as absolutely genius.

And I'm here to tell you that they redefined who the Democratic, oh, absolutely. They redefined who the Democratic Party was in a disastrous way, in a catastrophic way. And I am hoping, and I think Biden understands it, although Biden went along with everything that I just described and then some, right? Biden was the bankruptcy bill under George Bush. Biden was mass incarceration again and again and again. But Biden seems to have has grasped the folly of all this. You know, this was a world historical mistake, a blunder that the Democrats made back. in the 90s and continuing up until quite recently.

But Biden isn't alone in that, and I think we have to recognize we are in a different moment now because the whole country has changed. The fallacy of that tax-cutting, austerity politics has been proven in a way that's devastated people's lives. It made us unable to deal with the coronavirus. But also, there's been changing, reckoning with all this among thinkers, including the economists who worked with Clinton, the two most famous economists who worked with Bill Clinton, Joe Stieglitz, Robert Reich are now people who are trumpeting the kind of things that Biden is doing.

So I think that we're really potentially in a moment of a huge historical sea change that was transformed. Right way to end that conversation. Thank you, you too. Positive. That's what we are here. Time for new rules, everybody. New rule. New rule, now that the U.S. is going to share up to 60 million doses of its AstraZeneca vaccine with other countries, each one has to come with a little note from us to them that says, the whole Trump thing. This one's on the house. Love America. Actually, not a bad idea. New Rule, someone must explain why making animals with paper is called origami,

but making animals with balloons is called sad. It's not fair. Balloon animals require more skill. Because while you're making one, you have the added pressure of a bunch of kids at a birthday party muttering, wow, this clown sucks. New Rule, now that America has been swept, with nomadland fever. Let's make it a TV show. Move over that girl, Mary Tyler Moore and Alice.

There's a new girl in town, and she's shitting in a bucket. Now, the network has just a few notes. We love that she drifts around in a van, but can she be 19 and hot? Maybe give her a different supporting cast. A handsome guy, a funny guy, a lesbian best friend, and a dog.

They can solve mysteries. Call me. New Rule, I've been a heterosexual for a long time, so someone has to tell me what I don't get about mud wrestling. When I see a beautiful woman, I never think, man, I'd love to see her punch her roommate in a swamp. It's the erotic equivalent of ice fishing. Someone must like it, just no one I've ever met.

New Orleans, someone must ask the kid whose science fair project was to smear lipstick on a cat's butt to see how much of the surfaces in the house. came into contact with the cat's anus. What did you find out? And did you tell Mom what you did with her lipstick before you put it back in her purse? What?

We're just joking here. And finally, new rule, nothing with crypto in the title ever turns out good. There is a mania rising in the country these days about cryptocurrency and how the train is leaving the station, so you better get on. Tesla has jumped in with both feet, and Microsoft accepts it for software now.

Excey, Etsy accepts it now, and so does PayPal and Starbucks and Whole Foods in Home Depot. One in ten Americans use their stimulus checks to invest in one of thousands of cryptocurrencies in existence, Bitcoin being the most famous, but there's also Ethereum, Binance, Tether, even one called Comrocket. There's also one called Dogecoin that someone started as a joke, but, As far as I can tell, it's exactly the same as all the other cryptocurrencies, because the whole thing is a joke. I fully understand that our financial system isn't perfect, but at least it's real.

Apple stock is worth money because Apple makes $1,000 phones that everyone buys and then drops in the toilet. But Dogecoin recently rallied to be worth more than the market cap of Ford and Kraft Foods, and it has no product and no workers. It's just Easter Bunny cartoon cat. I've read articles about cryptocurrency. I've had it explained to me, and I still don't get it,

and neither do you or anyone else. I'll explain why. So, there's these things called nerds. And in 2008, one of them, we don't know who, because this person or group of persons is still anonymous, made up Bitcoin out of thin air using the fake name Satatoshi Nakamoto, which I think are the Japanese words for monopoly money. Now, capitalism, of course, has always contained an element where instead of actually making something or providing a service for money, you could make money in the exciting field of money.

But we knew money had to originate from and be generated by something real somewhere, to which cryptocurrency says, no, it doesn't. Maybe this is why Warren Buffett says cryptocurrencies basically have no value and they don't produce anything. What you hope is that somebody else comes along and pays you more money for them later on, but then that person's got the problem in terms of value zero. Or as another analyst put it, it's an open Ponzi scheme.

It's like having an imaginary best friend who's also a banker. This is how the world economy crashed in 2009. It wasn't the lost value in actual houses that sunk us. It was this virtual market that required, inventing algorithms to bet on how much houses might be worth in a virtual scenario. But then the landlord called in the bill for this virtual market because in

adult land, it turns out the landlord is always real. Our problem here is at root, not economic, but psychological. People who have been raised in a virtual world are starting to believe they can really live in it. Much of warfare is a video game now. Why not base our economy the same way? And cryptocurrency is literally a game. Bitcoins are created by what they call mining, mining. But not the kind of mining that's done by seven dwarves who share a woman.

This kind of mining involves using rooms full of supercomputers to make something that is purposefully arbitrary. Essentially, one computer thinks of a number between one, and infinity, and other computers take trillions of guesses at what it is. It's the old game of I'm thinking of a number between one and ten, except times a gazillion, and the guy guessing the number lives in China,

and the guy who knows the number lives in the Matrix. Take that, work. Do I need to spell this out? There is something inherently not credible about creating hundreds of billions in virtual wealth with nothing ever actually being accomplished, and no actual product made or service rendered. It's like Tinkerbell's light.

It's power source is based solely on enough children believing in it. And unfortunately, what is real is the unfathomable amount of electricity those massive supercomputers suck up for their mining. The power, listen to this, the power being used right now to guess numbers and win imaginary prizes is the same as all the electricity needed to light all of it. of New York State, except the governor's office

where they use romantic candles. Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind. Just one uses more energy than a million visa transactions and has the same carbon footprint as 85,000 hours

of watching YouTube. What a 15-year-old calls the weekend. Bitcoin uses more energy than Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google combined. I mean, cars are bad for the climate, but at least they take you somewhere.

In Tiger Woods case, a tree. But this, this, this is just a beanie baby that runs on coal. How can a company like Tesla be all in on saving the planet with electric cars and then participate in destroying

it with this completely unnecessary online play money. Almost all the people who tout Bitcoin and deal in Bitcoin and who won't shut the fuck up about Bitcoin. The millennials, the Gen Ziers, the Silicon Valley types, these are all the same people who see themselves as hip and progressive and big environmentalists. Bullshit, you're money-hungry opportunists,

and you're not allowed to pretend you care about the environment. According to the journal Nature, Bitcoin's growth could single-handedly push global temperatures above the tipping point of two degrees Celsius. I know melting ice caps can wait.

Your green new deal involves cash. Social scientists call this cognitive dissonance, a disconnect between who you think you are and what you actually do. I call it being full of shit. All right, that's our show of

We at the Mirage in Vegas. Oh, thank you, Jesus. July 16th and 17th. I want to thank Nancy McLean, Thomas Frank, and Ben Sheehan. We'll be back next week. Thank you, folks. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.