Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #633: Elon Musk

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

Bill’s guests are Elon Musk. (Originally aired 04/28/23) 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. Start the clock. Look at you. Thank you, people. Thank you. Please, we got a huge show. Very exciting show today. I appreciate that. I know why you're excited. Yesterday was Take Your Child to Work Day. Maybe next year, Tucker Carlson. kids. That's the big news.

And yet another setback for the Kremlin. Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News. Came out of the blue. Fox gave him the standard thing they say when they fire somebody. We've decided to move backwards without you. Tucker apparently seething with a sense of victimhood, and then he heard about the firing. There's also something else in the mix here. They say there's a producer on the show, a woman producer who is making claims that he

Tucker subjected her to sexist remarks and anti-Semitic comments, and that was just from watching the show. But, you know, that's just the Fox model. They do this all the time. Remember Glenn Beck? Gone. It was the biggest star. Bill O'Reilly can't reply.

Gone. They're like Minuto. Really? They put a new guy in. Nobody notices. It's just... But the other big news this week, politically, Joe Biden announced it.

He's in. That's it. That's it. That's it. elections all about getting your base excited. So he made the announcement in drag wearing a mask. I'm drinking a bud light. So are Democrats excited about this?

I would say the reaction has been a little like when your in-laws announced they can stay an extra week. But it says to say the Republican National Committee. As soon as Biden announced, they released this ad. AI generated, by the way, about the future under Joe Biden. China invades Taiwan, migrant armies

overrun the border. San Francisco is under martial law. It's a little bizarre. Imagine if Joe Biden was president. You know, I don't have to. It's like when I was 15, and my father said to me, you know, masturbation will make you go blind.

And I'm like, I've been doing it for three years, okay? I wouldn't even know who I'm talking to. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has two more trials going on where he's the star, really. One where he's accused of hanging somebody or wanting to hang somebody, right? And one where he's accusing being accused of raping somebody. And he's the frontrunner. So you know what? Is Joe Biden old?

Fuck yes. Has he lost a step? Probably. But if it's him against Trump? Trump, I don't care if it's Biden's head in a jar of blue liquid. I'm voting for it. All right, we got a great show. Michael Moynihan and Constance and Kissinger here. But I don't know if I've ever been so excited to have my first guest here. My first guest is the man who made electric cars a thing. And is currently working on perfecting reusable rockets, space travel, connecting the human brain directly to computers, connecting cities with electromagnetic bullet trains, the Starling satellite system that's so important to the war in Ukraine. And then on Tuesday, it's going to work on that tunnel thing on traffic.

He also tweets a lot. Elon Musk, ladies, you know, a minute. Did I get the full order of things that you do in a day there? When I was reading there, I left out the tunnel thing at the end. Do you work on all these things? A lot of jobs. Do you do all these things every day? Do you work on all of them in a single day?

No. No. But I do have a long work day. Yeah. So I work a lot. Well, I'm so thrilled you're here because, you know, we do a show where we talk about what change has happened in the world, but we just talk. There's a very few people who actually make change happen. You are one of those people, probably...

You know, I just want to say I love this audience. Well, you're a likable guy. I mean, they attack you a lot. They do. And you seem to laugh it off, which I think is fantastic. I love it that you have a sense of humor, because a guy, as important as you, who makes changes, could use your powers for evil and not good.

The fact that... Yeah, absolutely. You could. Of course. I would never use them for evil. No, I know. But the way I know that is because you have a sense of humor. Yeah.

You really do. I do. You like laughing. You like laughing. to be funny. I kill me. Right. As opposed to somebody like Zuckerberg, who I'm not even sure

is a real boy. Yeah. I actually love comedy, and I still, you know, like, many years ago, I actually was in the audience here and watched your show. Oh, really? I've been a long time admirer of your show. Oh, well, thank you. Let me get back to you being a genius.

Okay. But that has always been my view, is that I was a history major. And when you study history, what you realize is that, you know, there's the great man theory, and they talk about kings and princes and queens and presidents. It's really the people in tech who change the world.

They're the people who deal the cards, whether it's fire or electricity, for good or bad, or the cotton gin, or the iPhone, or the atom bomb, those are the cards, and the rest of us just play it. Would you agree with that assessment? I think technology is the thing that causes these big step changes in civilization. So obviously you've got things like, say, the Gutenberg Press, before which was very difficult to get books.

They were very rare. Even if you had a thirstful knowledge, you really couldn't do anything about it because there were very few books to read. So, and the internet is something beyond the good book press, I think. But, you know, it's, it's a, when I first saw the internet coming into being, in a way that the general public could use it, it felt like the humanity as a whole was developing a nervous system. So previously, the way the information would travel would be by osmosis,

one person to another, or one person calling another. But the access to information is very limited. Now, with the Internet, it's like having a Nova system. It's like any part of humanity has access to almost all the information of humanity. Like you could be in the middle of the Amazon jungle with, say, a Starlink terminal, and have access to more information than the president did in 1980. Right. Well, anything on your phone. Everything.

Yeah. Okay. So you are one of these dealers, these people who deal the cards in civilization. I deal some memes, too. Yes, you do. Some, uh... So I think a lot of people thought when you bought Twitter that this is kind of an outlier. Like, how does this, what doesn't fit with these other things you're doing? I never thought that.

Because I think you're dealing with big civilizational issues and problems, and And I was right on your page. I think Twitter is one of them. I mean, you have talked about this woke mind virus. Yes. In really apocalyptic terms. You should explain why you don't think it's hyperbole to say things like it's pushing civilization towards suicide. First of all, what is the woke mind virus?

And if we don't deal with this, nothing else can get done. Tell me why you think that. Yeah. So I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is. anti-meritocratic and anything that is, that results in the suppression of free speech. So, you know, those are two of the aspects of the work blind virus that I think are very dangerous, is that it's often anti-merocratic. You can't question things. Even the questioning is bad. So, you know, another way to, almost anonymous would be cancel culture. And obviously people

try to cancel you many times. Many times. Yeah. I mean, you're... Every week. Yeah. From left and right. I've had it from both sides. Yeah. And it's interesting. People, you and I are both like in that little group of people. Maybe it's a bigger group now. Yeah. Who are called conservative, who haven't really changed. I don't see you, think of you as a conservative. I'm definitely,

yeah, like, I at least think of myself as a moderate, you know, so, I mean, at least, like, I've spent a massive amount of my life energy, building sustainable energy, you know, electric vehicles and batteries and solar and stuff, to help save the environment. That's not a, you know, it's not exactly far right. No, you drew that diagram.

You drew that diagram once where you're here. I related to that. And, like, the world has changed. Right. I feel the same way. I feel like very often wokeness is not building on liberalism. It's the opposite of liberalism. I couldn't mention it.

Yes, exactly. Many examples where it's the option, including free speech. Free speech is actually extremely important. And it's bizarre that we've come to this point where, like, free speech used to be a left or a liberal value. And yet we see from, you know, the in quotes left a desire to actually censor. And that seems crazy. I mean, I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that, undermines the First Amendment.

There's a reason for the First Amendment. The First Amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely and where saying certain things would get you thrown into prison. And they were like, well, we don't want that here. And by the way, in many parts of the world, including parts of the world

that people might think are relatively similar to the United States, the speech laws are draconian. England is quite different. I won't name any country, but... England. Why are we protected them? They have no First Amendment. It's very easy to prove

libel in England. Whereas here it's almost... I love England. Yeah, you too. But I wouldn't want to say the wrong thing. Yes. You could be sued easier. I mean, there are... In France, I think if you deny the Holocaust, which I think is abhorrent, but I also think it should be part

of free speech, you can be thrown into jail. Okay, so this... I really can't says this enough, we must protect free speech. And free speech only matters, it's only relevant when it's someone you don't like saying something you don't like.

Because obviously, for speech that you like is, you know, that's easy. So it's and it's, the thing about censorship is that, sure, for those who would advocate it, just remember, at some point, that will be turned on you. So,

this woke mind virus, how did it start? Was it bats? Was it a escape from a lab? I mean, what is your assessment of why? Because it's fairly recent. Why did it start and why?

I was trying to figure out where it's coming from. I think it's actually been a long time brewing in that it's, I think it's been going on for a while. And the amount of indoctrination that's happening in schools and universities is I think far beyond what parents realize. And I only kind of came to realize as somewhat late.

The experience that we had in high school and college is not the experience that kids today are having and hasn't been for, I don't know, 10 years, maybe 20 years. Are not parents themselves also a big part of the problem? Well, I suppose in some cases that parents, but I think like the parents are just generally not aware of what their kids are being taught or what they're not being taught. They're letting the kids think that they're equal. I mean, yeah, let me give me an example that a family told me, which, you know, his daughters go to college and, sorry, go to high school in the Bay Area.

and he was asking them, like, well, so who are the, you know, who are the first few presidents of the United States? They could name Washington, but, and I said, well, what do you know about him? Well, he was a slave owner. What else? Right. Exactly. Nothing.

Right. Like, okay, that's, maybe you should know more than that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the woke mind virus. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, you know, the, you know, slavery is obviously a horrific institution,

but we should still know more about George Washington than that. And by the way, one that was practiced all over the world forever since the beginning of time by every race, including people of color. I'm sorry to tell you that. It's huge in the Bible. Absolutely. Bible loves it. Really? Yes. They're quite strict about, like, you know, don't take someone else's slave in that kind of thing. Right. But no one ever ever.

says just don't do it. They don't. They don't. At no point does it say slavery's read in the Bible. They do not condemn it at all. They just... So it's... But Twitter is not doing bad, right?

I mean, I saw today that Tucker Carlson recently fired. You were just on his show and he lost his job, so I hope this isn't an old. Yeah. But hopefully... What are you? The Angel of Death? Yeah, no, exactly.

I'm not the typhoid Mary of talk shows. For some reason, people just get fired after. His rant yesterday or today on Twitter... Did more than every cable news monologue or something like that. Is that right? Well, Twitter has a tremendous audience. So there's 250 million people that spend an average of half an hour a day on Twitter.

So it's about 120 to 130 million user hours per day, and it's been increasing. So we didn't do anything. To be clear, we did nothing special whatsoever. I learned about it afterwards that he had posted something on Twitter. So it's just that Twitter has a lot of people's attention. And it tends to be the people that are, that read a lot or are interested in current events and generally are pretty influential. But most of the people who tweet are the same people, right?

I mean, the people who actually tweet are supposed to just reading it. Yeah. I feel like that's, I've read this many times. that's a very small percentage of the people on Twitter. And it seems like... See, here's why I don't tweet anymore because you may be the mayor of Tweetown now. Yeah.

And a mayor of Tweetown. I'm getting a cap with that. And I'm glad... And I like it that the mayor likes my jokes. But the reason I don't do it anymore is because the mob of mean girls is still there. And that has not changed. I know.

Like, it's too easy to get canceled. And I don't even know what pisses them off. They're so nuts, these kids. I feel like I'm walking on a roof with a blindfold. I could fall off any time. That was the most innocuous thing, but it's like, you know, I said George Washington was a great president.

Oh, how dare you? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It hit some floors, but overall... So how do you fix that? It's instrumental in the equation of the United States. Yeah. Well, you have to say, like, what does canceled mean? You know, I mean, yes, if people attack you on Twitter,

that's one thing, but frankly, that's just going to increase engagement. So I would just ignore it. Well, that's easy for you because they can't take your job away or any of your main 10 jobs, but they could take mine, and they did once, by the way. Yeah. So, you know, I was, like, literally canceled. You know, I mean, like, the show is canceled.

So, okay, so you were in Congress at Congress the other day talking with Chuck Schumer about AI. I'm very interested in this because you've been on this for years. I've always thought you were right about this. I think you're right about almost everything. I mean, let's have more babies and raise them on Mars. I don't get that, but okay. I just think we should be cautious about civilizational decline and we have plummeting birth rates most places, yeah.

Right, and also plummeting resources. No, no, resources will be fine. But they're not fine. And I know a lot of others. They're not fine now. Look, I'm not suggesting complacency. We do want to move to a sustainable energy economy as quickly as possible,

but we're not in any danger of resource collapse. But lots of people don't have enough food or water. Water, we will run out of water. They're running out of sand. Earth is 70% water by surface area. But you can't drink that. Desalination is absurdly cheap. Why don't we do it, then?

We do it. It is done. You have a lot of free time. It is done. There is a lot of desalination done. Okay. There's plenty of water. This is not an issue. I want to be clear.

All right. So, but let's talk about AI, because, like, you were, you were on this tip 10 years ago when nobody else was. And I always thought he's right. Why? Because I've seen too many movies. Everything that happens in movies, that happens in real life. And, you know, if you make things that are way smarter than you, why wouldn't they become your overlords? So what did you say to Chuck Schumer, and what are we doing about this? I know you want to pause in AI, because just in the last six months with Chat, GPT, which came from a company you started. Yes.

Well, I mean, a friend of mine has a sort of modification of outcomes, you know, so instead of the simplest thing being the most likely, like the most ironic outcome is the most likely. Right. Right, yes. So with respect to AI, I just think we should be, we should have some sort of regulatory oversight. So, you know, for anything that is a danger to the public,

if it's sort of aircraft, cars, food and drug, and whatnot, got some regulatory oversight, like a referee, essentially, and making sure that companies don't cut corners. So I think that since, if one agrees that AI is a potential risk to the public, then there should be some regulatory body that oversees what companies are doing so that they don't cut corners and potentially do something very dangerous. And if we don't do something, lay out a scenario for me in the next two, five, ten years. if nothing is done, because we're very good at doing nothing,

especially when it comes in the way of profit, and this is a big profit engine now for companies, they're going to want to just compete with each other. I mean, there are people like Ray Kurzweil who doesn't think it's a problem at all. Actually, Ray Kurzweil's prediction for artificial superintelligence is 2029. He's not far wrong.

Right. But he doesn't think it's a problem, whereas people like you and Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking thought, think it's a problem. Yeah, it depends if some people want to live forever or for a much longer period of time and they see AI as the only way to, or digital superintelligence is as the only thing that can figure out how to get them to live forever.

I think as well as in that category. So he would prefer to have AI artificial general intelligence than not because it can figure out longevity. So are you optimistic? I read in your Rolling Stone article back in the day that you said you can never be happy unless you're in love. well you can be half happy I suppose I mean there's two things I think to be to be most happy if you're happy in love

and you love your work then you'll be I think fully happy if you lack either of those two if you have one of those two things be half happy you know roughly I feel like the theme in a lot of your works that connect all these different things is connecting

like you want to connect things you know you want to connect on the hyperloop and you want to connect this to Mars and even Twitter. I want to connect four. I love that game. What? Connect four. You know when you get the

it. Sorry, this is a comedy right, you know? Let's throw us some comedy in there. It's hard for you because when you bought Twitter, you're kind of doing what you did when you took

over when you started Tesla, you lived at the factory, right? I feel like that's your pattern. You get into this thing and then you've got to live at the factory to make it work. You've been back and you moved to Texas and then you went back up to San Francisco

because of Twitter. I was living in the library of Twitter for a while. Yes. But I think things are reasonably stabilized right now. It was just on the fast track to bankruptcy after that position, so I had to take drastic action. There wasn't any choice.

I'm just saying it's hard for a woman. Yeah. To, like, when the guy lives at the factory. Yes. That could be a stumbling block. Yes. But, overall, my concern with Twitter is to,

that it is somewhat of the digital town square, and it's important that there be both the reality and perception of trust. for a wide range of viewpoints. And there was a lot of censorship going on. And we sort of uncovered a lot of that with the Twitter files, including a lot of government-driven censorship, which it seems that that's got to be a constitutional violation

what was going on there. Since I'm like an avid Twitter user, I could detect that like something's not right here. And so that's really why the deposition. It wasn't because I thought this was an easy way to make money or something like that. Man, this is, being mayor of Twitter town, Tweetown, or whatever, is definitely like, there's a lot of arrows pointed at you,

flying at you. Of course. But you seem to handle that okay. I hope you do. Because, look, I mean, geniuses are going to be a little quirky sometimes. But your heart is always in the right place. You were trying to fix this world. And, look, I could talk to you forever.

We can't today. I'd love to get high with you. I know a great place to talk. But I can't tell you how much I appreciate you. I know you have a lot of choices and places you can go. Thank you. Elon Musk, ladies and gentlemen. All right, I'll see you soon, Elon.

All right, let's read our panel. Okay, here they are. All right, he is co-list of the fifth column podcast. Michael Moynihan is back with us, Michael. And he's co-ist of the YouTube show and podcast Triggernometry, an author of an immigrant's love letter to the West, Constantine Kissin. Hey, great to have you on our show.

Okay, so it kind of bugs me that I have to talk about Fox News all the time. There always seem to be in the news. And look, I'm not going to lie, they're important. I mean, I feel like in the time I've been doing this, which is almost 30 years now, the two most significant political developments was we elected a black president and Fox News, because Fox News changed the game of what journalism was. Before, it was slanted sometimes, but people were basically trying to tell their audience Here's what happened.

Whereas Fox News, we saw, especially in the Dominion suit, it's not that at all. It's like, what does the audience want to hear? Oh, we'll tell you that. So now that they've fired Tucker Carlson, I can't hope but thinking maybe this is succession. Maybe Kendall and Roman, because Rupert is 92, are trying to change Fox News and make it less toxic. Could they do that and would it even make a difference? I don't know who those people are on that show, because I've seen it. But I presume that these are people who are old and dying off.

I mean, he's 92 or 93, right? And you don't get rid of your biggest host. I mean, 3.5 million, the only thing that was beating him the last week on cable was the NBA playoffs. That's both terrifying and, you know, what is the... I mean, what is Fox doing by getting rid of him? So we figure this out that there's... That's what they said about O'Reilly.

Well, but O'Reilly had the lawsuit, and there was some... sexual harassment stuff there. Glenn Beck was a better example. Roger Ailes, for all of his problems, like literally did not want to get, like, you know, when Beck was doing 5 o'clock hour, he was doing 3 million people. At the top of his game, they fired him.

The top of his game, because he was getting too toxic. But things kind of spun out of control. This is what people inside Fox tell me, after Roger Ailes left and after Roger Ailes died. And then Rupert kind of micromanages, but from a distance. And it's been allowed when they see these texts and the Dominion stuff,

And apparently the Tucker stuff is stuff that didn't come out that was actually redacted, is that Tucker talking about people in upper management and calling them all sorts of nasty names. Because otherwise, why do you get rid of your cash cow? Because you can replace them with another cash cow. Can you know? Absolutely. They've done it. They've done it before.

Yeah. They got rid of Glenn Beck. They got Megan Kelly, Bill O'Reilly. It's not about the person. It's about the message. And they will find somebody else. Now, people went over to this other, was it, O-A-N or Newsmax? Okay, these are Fox News competitors.

And that was the message. We will find someone else to tell us what we want to hear. Well, the problem is good journalism doesn't get clicks, right? It's about pumping up the base or whatever. And that works both ways, by the way. We've seen this, you know, I hate to make this point here in the heart of liberalism. But, you know, if you look at, I was a stand-up comedian in 2016. I believed all the stuff we were being told about Donald Trump.

I used to have a joke. I'm from Russia. They say Russians don't understand democracy. got Trump elected, didn't we? And guess what? Guess what? That wasn't true, right? There is some truth in that. But that wasn't really what happened.

Look at the pandemic. How many lies were we told about the pandemic? Mass work, they don't work. China, where does the virus come from? So I think the truth is both sides of the media spectrum have gone into this kind of sensationalism and they're not doing good journalism because good journalism is boring.

Yeah, that's true, but I don't know how you can be so concerned about, like, China's influence through TikTok when Putin's influence through Fox News is much more virulent for this country. I think we can be concerned about both, can we? Which is worse. I mean, I don't know what TikTok has done yet. Maybe they could. I think that's something to certainly take seriously that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. Right.

But we already have Tucker Carlson basically saying that he supports Russia over Ukraine. Bill, there is no greater supporter of Ukraine than I. And I was frankly disgusted of the way that Tucker covered that issue, even though I've been on his show because I, like him, believe in free speech. However, we have to be able to chew gum, as you say, and walk at the same time. Those are both things that we should be looking at, right? And the Chinese TikTok thing is a little bit different

because what you have is a foreign state that is using the social media app to corrupt the minds of young children while also feeding their own children a very different version of this app, which is awesome and pro-China and so on. So we should look at both, I think. All right. Let me go on to the other succession issue, which is Joe Biden announced this week

that he's going to run for re-election. Nikki Halley, I... Biden... That's not very... That's not bad. Okay, so Nikki Haley who's running for the Republican nomination. She lost no time in jumping on this.

She said the idea that he will make it until 86, which is what he would be at the end of his next term, is not something I think is likely. Wow. That's, yeah. That's kind of mean. That's kind of mean. Okay.

But it's also kind of true. I will deal with the ageism aspect of this at the end of our show tonight. But for right now, let me say what this is really about. This is about Kamala Harris. For whatever reason, they think that is the weak point for Joe Biden, that Kamala Harris is the vice president. And she, look, I get why Republicans don't like her.

They wouldn't like anybody like that. Why has she also lost the Democrats? What's the smoking gun that makes her this toxic? I don't quite get it. She has lower approval ratings than Biden does. But why? That's impressive. I mean, it's a very good thing.

question asked, because she's been kind of hidden. And that's been the complaint from her office. And they've been actually out there now saying, like, look, because this is actually a real concern of Democratic voters saying that, you know, the guy is going to be 86. It's very, very close. One, you know, breath away from the presidency is Kamala Harris. There was a campaign that the administration waged against her.

Very, very clear. And they've acknowledged this in sort of back-channel ways. Through New York to New York Times, through the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, saying that she's terrible at this. I mean, you saw all these stories. She's bad at this. But they got her as the VEEP now, and now it's turning.

And now everyone's saying, well, you know, we have to put her out there. I have to defend her. I think that the border stuff was bad for Republicans, of course. That's number one. That's what it is. You know what it is? They gave her that. They said, the border.

No one can fix it. You take it. So she got associated with a problem that would take more than just the vice president to solve. Who doesn't have any power? She didn't go down to the border either, which is a problem. That was not good. And also she could have talked about it differently. Yes.

She can't. Because the Democratic Party, like many left-wing parties all over the West, they've been entrapped by the woke mind virus you've been talking about. So you can't talk about immigration if you're on the left because you're afraid of the people to your left, right? You're afraid of saying you're racist. Exactly. And we have this problem in England where I live. We have ethnic minority politicians who are attempting to deal with this issue. They're still being called racist.

You can't deal with it properly, and that's why she's been saddled with it. I mean, Bernie Sanders used to be one of the most virulent immigration restrictionists. And his argument was that it suppresses working-class wages, which is an argument some economists make. He's backed away from that in recent years, and I think that's why. It's not just Bernie Sanders. It's Bill Clinton. It's Hillary Clinton.

It's Chuck Schumer. It's all the Democrats, and it's all the people in England, just the same on the left. Everybody used to agree that countries need borders, and for some reason we've forgotten that. How does... I feel like both parties could win so easily if they were just...

If they got rid of the two people they're running? 40%? Trump's what? 32%. This is what we fucking have? These are the two people who said in your monologue. If I have to, I'm going to do it, but I don't want to. There's nobody else out there that we can find that Joe Biden is going to be 86

in his approval rating is 38% of a Gallup poll today. The lowest it's been in his entire presidency. And then on the other side, Donald Trump, the less said about him, the better. Okay. Okay. Everybody has to stop saying 86. That's what he would be when he's leaving,

when he's saying goodbye, okay, he's still a spry 80 now. Come on. Look, the problem here is, it's not about Joe Biden, it's about the fact that the President of the United States, the most powerful country in the world that we all outside of, out here,

take orders from, effectively, right? This man is not even at his own prime. He's not even at his own prime, right? You are a country of 300-plus million people, and you can't even get a guy who's in his own prime. prime to be president. Isn't that insane? Well, it depends

on what you consider prime. Most civilization in the world would consider somebody that old a village elder who was wiser than other people. Just sit in a corner and give advice. That's what you would do. Right. He doesn't need to be...

You know what? It takes a lot of energy to run for president. It doesn't take all that much to be present. They come to you and they say oh, wise one, you have seen it all. What do we do? and he says, yes, I have seen it all. And by the way, he hasn't done that bad at it so far. There's a reason why people clap when they say his name.

It's not just big as it's Donald Trump, because he got things done that other presidents in that position wouldn't have. Didn't he handle Ukraine, okay? Yes, that's the one issue I agree with him on. Absolutely. Absolutely. And what has he fucked up horribly? Look, he... Blah, blah, blah.

What has he fucked up so horribly? He hasn't dealt with it. the border issue for a start, right? He hasn't dealt with that. He's pushing from my life. Well, he kept Trump's Title 42, which was the law that said if you can't come across the border, we're using COVID as the excuse to stop the flow. He's not, you don't really want him to build the wall, do you? Not particularly, but what I want him to do, I mean, he's pushing on the cultural stuff. The Democrats are continuing to pander to this

woke left. Yeah, I don't love that either. Well, right, so that's what he's doing. And from my perspective, these things are very much antithetical to the entirety point of America and Western civilization. Well, the two main failures are actually extensions of Trump policies. And that is the border, which

was a mess under Donald Trump. I mean, he said he was going to build a wall. Mexico is going to pay it for it. Obviously, that never happened. And spending. I mean, inflation that we've had is because as, you know, anyone from people on the left, like Larry Summers, to people on the right, too, say that inflation,

Everywhere always is a monetary phenomenon, and we printed too much money. And that's something that Donald Trump was a part of and started off. And Joe Biden continues. So all the things that I don't like about him are actually transpartism. Exactly. There's one more thing, though. There's one more thing, because you say he handled Ukraine well, and I agree with you. But in my opinion, Ukraine wouldn't have happened if he wasn't president.

Because what happened with Afghanistan is what emboldened Putin to do this, right? That's my view. That is what happened. You're just pulling that out of your ass. No, I'm not pulling that. Well, you are. It's just, it's just a... I've got more.

I've got more in my ass. But to be clear, that's possible. It's possible Putin looked at Afghanistan, which, by the way, both, as you're pointing out, both Trump and Biden wanted to get out of Afghanistan. That was Trump's plan that was put into motion. He inherited that almost the way Kennedy inherited the Bay of Pigs. Okay.

So... Yeah, I mean, it's a... also true that, you know, that might have been a thing, but we've been appeasing Putin's expansionism and revengeism for a long time. I mean, he cut off two things in 2008, nine, in Georgia, as South a state of America. And then Crimea in 2014. Right. So it wasn't just all by. It's a part, it's a part of a thing that we've allowed. Well, that happened under Obama, right? So this is my point. The shift from Trump to Biden didn't make America weaker abroad because people didn't like Donald Trump, but they feared him and they respected him. Now, I was never a supporter of his or a fan of his,

But my point is, what happened in Afghanistan and other signaling from America under Biden made America weaker in the eyes of other people. Why do you think there's a crisis with China now? Why do you think there's a crisis with Ukraine? These are not accidents. People look at what's happening here, and they go, the country's weak,

the country's distracted, the country's divided, it's time for us to act. But actually it's not. That's the thing. Is that I would have... Have you had said to me five years ago before Trump and before COVID? Do you think this country will be where we are right now after those two disasters?

I would have said, no, we're going to be off Schitt's Creek. And yet, life goes on amazingly well. The economy is doing, that's like what is unemployment? 3% or something? I thought that would take us down. I thought Trump would take us down. I never thought he would do the things that other people said. I didn't think he was going to get into a war.

Everybody was saying that on the left. He's going to get us into a war. He's going to crash the market. I said, no. What he's going to do is try to stage a coup. that's the thing he did do. Okay, but he didn't do all that shit. Life went on.

I feel like America is amazingly resilient and stable. I agree with you. Amazingly. I mean, I agree broadly in the sense that, you know, there's this kind of catastrophizing about America since, you know, I started paying attention to politics. It's every year and every party does it. But the thing that you have to correct if you're Democrats

is in that same recent poll is asked if the kind of was good or excellent, the numbers were on 17 to 18%. So it's prices of the pump, it's inflation, it's things like that. That has lowered, but it has not cleared the decks in people's minds. They still believe it's a big disaster. Now, look, Joe Biden inherits a terrible situation on the economy, but I think you misunderstand me, perhaps. Well, I'm not saying America isn't resilient.

I'm just saying I think it's important that America continues to be a force in the world, and it hasn't been in the way that it ought to be, in my opinion. You have the perspective, I think, that people from your country, from lots of countries have here, that this country's better off than a lot of the people who are native to it will not allow. For some reason, they have to shit on it. I mean, when I talk to immigrants, that is one thing they do not like about the left, that they're always down on this country. We're irredeemable and we're racist, and everything has looked through shit-stained glasses.

And they're like, you know, ask. them why they came here and they will tell you Ron DeSantis put me on a plane that's why I'm going to say it. But you know when I see how many of the young people like

want to give socialism and I and sometimes Marxism a try, I think Andrew Sullivan wrote a great column on it. He said Marx, Carl Marx, the most assigned economist at the top schools. The third most taught book. And

Marx was a huge asshole. Like the kind of things that are anti-Semite, he's a self-hating Jew, Sheikh Rivera. Yeah. Another one that they love to put on a t-shirt. I cannot tell you how many ways this guy was a huge asshole. Yeah.

I hope it's an understatement that he was an asshole. He was a vicious murderer. Yeah. A vicious murderer. Did not believe in free speech? No. Hated homosexuals. Yes.

Oh, unbelievable. Ruined the Cuban economy. They banned rock music. Like they banned the Beatles in Cuba, etc. And also in a period. And that's going too far now. Also an imperialist, too, because he's not Cuban. He's Argentinian.

Right. And he died in Bolivia, trying to foment a revolution there, tried to foment a revolution in Africa, and tried to foment a revolution successfully did so in Cuba. And when people wear these shirts, I find it... You know, it's funny, we police language in an amazing way now that if you say something that's a little bit off, they can fuck up your career forever.

Right. But you have people walking around the symbols don't matter as much, right? I mean, there used to be a restaurant here in L.A. called Mao's Kitchen, which is an ironic thing for a person who's, you know, It might be still around, that it starved 50 million people. It's because that Mao's kitchen is not the greatest name. But people don't have these, they have these Che Guevara's shirts. They don't know the first thing about the guy,

but they will wrestle you to the ground if you say the wrong syllable. You can put the emphasis here. You're like, oh, fucking fine. But you have a Cuban mass murder on your shirt, and everyone's like, that's good. That's good. Everyone's literate. It's literacy. 100% literacy.

You can't read anything. You can only read Castro speeches, but you're literate. Great, thanks. I appreciate it. It's funny that you mentioned, you know, restriction of speech and political correctness. Do you guys know where it comes from? Tell us. The Soviet Union.

Yes. Political correctness never had anything to do with protecting people's feelings or anything like that. It was very simple. Political correctness was a way of saying to people, what you're saying is true, but we don't like hearing it, right? That's what it was, and that's how it's been important. And to me, someone who comes from the Soviet Union is mind-boggling. And you were talking earlier about why this woke ideology is so dangerous to the West. it is because people in other parts of the world

are not teaching their young children to hate their own country. If you continue to do this, how is the West going to do in the battle of civilizations? Because that's what we're in, right? The Chinese want to thrive, the Russians want to thrive, and they're teaching their children to be strong, to be confident, to go out there to learn science instead of, you know, equity and diversity.

And a bridge doesn't work very well if it's built on diversity instead of math. I'm with you. I'm with you on all that. We found the topic you and I agree. Oh, we agree on a lot of stuff like that. Absolutely. I think it's a problem, by the way, that is another trans-partisan thing,

because you see this on the right a lot now with people of Victor Orban in Hungary and Putin, too. And they say, you know, look what he's done on... I mean, these are very far right-wing people. And these fringe, they say, look what he's done on trans issues. They do this stuff very specifically from the Kremlin. They publish it in a very, very big way because they put the hook into people

on the right in America, and they love this stuff, the same thing with Orban, because they want to cut corners. They don't want to win the debate. Win the debate's really hard. If you do it legislatively, and there's so many people on the right

that want to do that now, with speech and books, etc., winning on the merits is very, very difficult. But if you get the government involved, use the weight of the government, and there's a lot of people that used to be sort of mainstream conservatives that now believe that.

And left has been the same thing for some time, too. Right. So. All right. Before I run into time, I just want to ask one more question about the Fox News thing, because it's not really about that. It's about Tucker Carlson's tweets. Now, I mean, texts, but that's my Freudian slip there.

Texts really are tweets now, especially if you're a famous person. Everybody is one discovery in a trial away from having everything you text to somebody put in public. Why does a guy like Tucker Carlson do that? Why? I mean, I haven't for years ever said anything to anybody. What you're hiding? Nothing. And that's it. I'm not hiding any. Oh, but come on, we all talk shit about people. Yeah, yeah. I'm just not going to do it in an email or a text.

You know, we'll go out to dinner. Yeah. What? No, because you're like Vinnie the Chin Gigante that you saw only outside. Right. Don't sit in there. They'll be fucking recorded you. I have a dinner at Mao's Kitchen tonight. and I have...

But... And also email. How can you go to people's emails? I don't understand this. Why is an email like mail? Like, if a company is suing me, can they call me up and say, oh, we're going to come to your house

and go into your draw and read your letters and print them? You couldn't do that. Mail is sacrosan, but email, and I know it's very much like mail because it just has an E in front of it. somehow that's okay. I don't get it.

I think it also speaks to the problem is we've completely lost sight of what words are and we decontextualize everything. So to me, if you said something in your private messages, that's very different to you saying it in public. We all say things in private that wouldn't air well on TV. Right.

Right. So why are we judging people on private communications when they were not made in public? But you know they would. Right. And I'm of the belief that if you, were using your messages and your emails and someone digs up your stuff from 20 years ago.

Mother Teresa wouldn't survive that. So, Bill, we've got to cut the shit out. We do. We've got to cut this out right now. But this is real good. We do new rules now, everybody. New rules. Okay, new rule. Now that King Charles has chosen this coronation Kish to serve guests on his big day,

he has to explain, why Kish? Is it a 70s theme coronation? I wasn't expecting naked sushi in a chocolate fountain, but nobody's eating Kish since 1987. Besides, it's French. Isn't there any good English food he could serve?

Oh yeah, that's right, there is it. It's gotten better. Neuro lovers in old movies have to explain, what was hot about pressing your head against the side of someone's head? Side boob can be kind of sexy, but side face?

What am I missing? Because, clearly, this guy just came. I'm not judging. I'm just saying there are freakier things in the world than drinking but light. New rule of Estee Lauder wants $250 for a lomere skin cream. They have to make a label

where it doesn't look like it's called lamer. One, it's a jar of wax, and two, the French name is misleading because Esty Lauder was from Queens. Birthplace birthplace of youthful and natural-looking skin. New Rule, the makers of no-hair crew, a depilatory gel for men,

need a better slogan than hair removal cream on my nuts? That's real. Yeah, it's like... It's like if the slogan for X-Lax was, I shit you not. New Rule, now that a Japanese high-tech company's Lunar Lander has crashed upon its descent to the moon's surface,

don't kill yourself over it. Failure is a necessary part of progress, and all this means is you're a true pioneer brave enough to take big risks to benefit mankind. And hey, you're still the world's leader and fuckable robots. And finally, new rules, stop making everything in the world about a win for your team versus a win for their team.

You know what's wrong with American politics? It's that if Biden supports Ukraine, Fox News has to root for Putin. If Trump says China is responsible for the COVID virus, which it is, Democrats have to defend a Marxist prison state. This is the problem. Always playing the card of your team

instead of just saying what's true. Which brings me to Diane Feinstein. If you're a newbie to American politics, Diane Feinstein is the senior senator from California. A little too senior. And for quite some time, Democrats have been pretending that she's just fine when in fact she is cognitively impaired

the way Republicans do with Marjorie Taylor Green. But Marjorie has no good excuse for the geranium and her cranium. Whereas Diane Feinstein has a very good one. She's about to turn 90. Now, I have made it a theme on this show to point out how wrong it is that ageism remains the last acceptable prejudice in America. And I have lobbied intensely for the idea that in the upper years of life, it's a case-by-case basis.

We're all individuals. Barbara Streisand, Dolly Parton, Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Rita Marino, Sally Field, Diane Keaton. They're all sharp as attack and still making movies and music. Leslie Stahl is still bringing it on 60 Minutes. Joyce Carol Oates writes a novel every two weeks. Carol Burnett just turned 90, and she keeps dropping sex tapes.

But case by case works the other way, too. Of course, no one likes to confront the realities of aging. But the New York Times says Feinstein struggles to recall the names of colleagues, frequently has little recollection of meetings or telephone conversations, and at times walks around in a state of befuddlement.

If you ask her what to do about the homeless problem, her answer is, I'm Batman. I don't want to say she's been in the Senate a long time, but her first vote was whether or not to stab Caesar. And the thing is, It's not just that she's mentally not all there. She's literally not there. Hasn't been since February.

She's missed 78 votes in the Senate this year out of 100. And the Senate isn't a place where it's okay to have some nice but adult person making key decisions. That's fine for the Vatican or Santa's Workshop. But the Democrats in the Senate don't have the luxury of being able to spare even one vote. Because of Feinstein's absence, the Senate Judiciary Committee can't clear.

are a backlog of Biden appointed judges, many of whom are women. And yet many of the leading female voices in the Democratic Party insist on playing an outdated woman card here and are labeling the calls for Feinstein to resign as sexist. Senator Gillibrand says,

the standard Feinstein is being held to as unacceptable and unprecedented. Okay, she's not being held to any standard. She's not there. Senator Debbie Stabenow says, we have male members that have various challenges, and I'm not hearing anybody suggesting that they retire. It's not a challenge.

She's not in the building. She's like a Malaysian airliner. It's not challenged. It's God. And as far as I'm not hearing anybody suggesting that they retire, a majority of Democrats say Biden should retire. And yet Nancy Pelosi said, I've never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way.

Really? Are Feinstein's memory problems contagious? There were many calls for Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd to retire. Chuck Grassley gets demands to retire more often than he pees. L.A. Congresswoman Norma Torres tweeted about Senator Feinstein.

When women age or get sick, the men are quick to push them aside, When men, Aja, get sick, they get a promotion. No, they don't. There are certainly some advantages to being a man, like our razors are cheaper. But you don't get promoted for being sick. No boss has ever called anyone in and said, I like the sound of that cough, Bob.

How does regional managers sound? You know, in 2023, the idea that being white and male is always a huge, advantage in that being a person of color or a woman means everyone is always plotting against you is simply a zombie lie. Let's live in the year we're actually living in. Stop trying to turn defending Diane Feinstein into a feminist crusade. This isn't about the senator's plumbing. It's about her wiring.

And you don't have to go too far back to recall another trailblazing feminist icon who stayed too long. I know you're not allowed to say anything bad about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but the truth is, Roe v. Wade got overturned because of her ego. In 2013, President Obama invited RBG to have lunch at the White House and casually say, hey, ever think about spending more time with the grandkids? She was 80 at the time, frail, and already a two-time cancer survivor, and no life insurance company would return her calls. But she didn't take the hints.

And when, in fact, she didn't live forever, it meant that Trump appointed her replacement instead of Obama, which turned out to be Amy Coney Snake Handler. And that turned out to be, to say the least, counterproductive to what RBG fought her whole life for. Turns out there's a whole lot of difference between you go, girl, and girl, you gotta go.

With age comes wisdom, but only if you can remember it. All right, that's our show. I'll be at the MGM Northfield Park in Cleveland, May 20th, Wind Creek, Event Center in Bethlehem, PA, June 4th, and watch The Club Random Podcast on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcast. I want to thank Michael Moynihan, Constance, and Kistin and Elon Musk. Now go watch overtime on CNN tonight at 1130 or catch it Saturday morning on YouTube. 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 For more information, log on to HBO.com.