Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #634: Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sam Harris and Mary Katharine Ham

Episode Date: September 30, 2023

Bill’s guests are Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sam Harris and Mary Katharine Ham. (Originally aired 09/29/23) 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. You too? All right. Please. We've been off long enough. Let's do a fucking show.

It's been a long time. Let's not ever be a part this long forever. And of course, right on cue. Always when we come back, big news. Diane Feinstein, our senator for something. No, don't laugh. No, she was a great serving senator. Her died today.

First female mayor of San Francisco, and everyone there today observed a minute of no shoplifting. Because, let me tell you, when she was mayor of San Francisco, she had that city under control. When there was poop in the street, it was because John Waters was making a movie. Also, a senator for 31 years in politics for 54 years. Not once was she caught. tape giving a handjob at a musical. I think that has to count. You've seen Lauren

Bobert, she's the MAGA congressman, I guess, she's a 36-year-old grandmother. She is from Colorado. A family's value Republican was caught on tape. She was at Beetlejuice, like getting her tit grabbed, vaping, grabbing cock. I'm not making this up. This is your

government at work. And so they threw her out of the theater. And on the way out, she gave them the finger and said, Do you know who I am? See, this is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. When Biden says that, he's genuinely asking. But, okay, good news and bad news about our government. There's going to be a government shut down again.

What? Why do we always go through this? It looks like. I know, it's terrible for a lot of people. On the bright side, the Senate approved a dress. code. Solving a problem they created last week. Although it was just for the men. Kristen Sinema, you're familiar with her?

She retains the right to dress like Kate McKinnon as weird Barbie. There was a Republican debate this week. Ron DeSantis is here. He was on it. Apparently he wanted, though, according to the polls. But it was a shit show. Was it not? Did you see this? I couldn't get through. I mean, there were just a... talking over it. It made me so tense

I had to calm down by watching a video of Britney Spears dancing with knives. This thing was... I always played the Republican debate drinking game. That's where you take a drink every time you go, oh God, I need a drink. The weirdest part

was they got onto the subject of education and Mike Pence. Mike Pence, as full disclosure, I've been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. Why bring who you're slow? Mike Pence, but people don't know. Now they looked into this. He's very kinky.

He and the wife. Sometimes she dresses up like Trump and tries to hang him. Now, I feel like it's my job to watch these debates. I couldn't get through it. I mean, I got through like 30 minutes of the 90 minutes or whatever it was. Also, at that point, Lauren Bobert said to me, my hand's getting tired.

Let's beat the traffic. No. Trump, of course, skipped the debate, as his custom is now. Instead of he had one of his rallies, or as I call them, drag queen's story hour. He had a bad week. Really, a New York judge, listen to this, shocking, said he's a complete fraud. I know. Apparently, he's inflated his property values in New York over the years by $2.2 billion.

They canceled the Trump Organization's business certification. Wow, that's pretty big news that didn't get much coverage. Still not the biggest crook of the week. That would be the senator from my home state in New Jersey. Bob Menendez, did you see this story? I love this guy. Old school. Old school.

No intricate laundering schemes here. No offshore accounts. I'll just stuff these gold bars in my wife's bra. I fucking love this guy. He had... His house was full of cash, stuffed into his clothes, and gold bars.

Who accepts gold bars? I've never been anywhere where they went. Yes, we take Visa MasterCard and gold bars. They said, why did you have all this cash around the house and gold bars? He said, for emergencies. Like, what sort of emergency requires cash

and gold bars if a rap video breaks out? All right. We have a great. great show. It's so great to be back. We have Sam Harris, Mary Catherine Hamm. And first up, he is the governor of Florida, who is, wow, currently on our show, currently running to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. Governor Ron DeSantis. Hey, how you do it? That's a pretty good news state, bro. I know, I know. Welcome back. That's not bad. All right. On a scale of 9 to 10, what did you think of my monologue?

Honestly, I was laughing. I'll give you that. Laughing on both sides of the aisle, too. So it was good. And welcome back to the show. I know you guys were on hiatus for a while. Thank you. I do got to put in a plug.

Like, if you ever have problems in California and in Florida, not only we have no income tax, no Vax mandates allowed in the state of Florida. Well, we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. I know, but people do wear cowboy boots with a suit. That's right. So I'm not going to fly.

Okay, that's just a crazy thing. We're proud of it. But there were no cowboys in Florida, Ron. Oh, yeah, you should try Florida. We're one of the top cattle states in America. Really? Once you go from the beach, you go the interior Florida. Nothing but cattle ranches.

Oh, all right. Well, I stand corrected. Because I'm wearing orthopedic shoes. There you got. Okay, so the debate. It was a shit show. But I, right. I mean, even you said you wouldn't have,

you would have turned it off if you were watching it. I mean, people screaming over each other. I couldn't hear what anyone they're saying. It was terrible. But I heard you won. I heard the polling said you won. What did you win? With Trump, no, honestly, with Trump not in the race, what did you win?

Well, but I think that, you know, he's not showing up. He's missing an action. He owes it to voters to show up and defend his record. And I think he thinks he can take a juice poll and then people don't get to vote. That's not the way the system works. You've got to go earn votes.

So I'm showing up. I'm showing that... And here's the thing. In the midst of all the show that happened, I was the one guy that people said, you know what? This guy's actually acting like a president when the rest were not.

And so, okay, there I am. I told Donald, let's do a debate. I'm debating your governor, Gavin Newsom soon. But let's do a debate with me and him. I'll do it. All right. But can I ask you one thing about these debates? Can you get rid of this guy, Doug Bergam?

This guy... This bugs me. He is not going to be president. This guy could start dating Taylor Swift. No one would care. North Dakota, it's not even this guy. But, you know, the thing is, you did not take my advice. What was it? I was on this show a few times when we talked about. I said, this guy's crazy to run this time.

He's, what are you, 45 years old? You just had a birthday, right? You could run for the next 20 years. If you were Biden, the next 40. Okay, why run against Trump? You're trying to thread this needle that will never happen. Well, for a couple reasons. You can't disavow him because that's the base, and yet you're running against him.

And that's why, I mean, let's face it, Ron, if this, if campaign was going well, you wouldn't be on this show. Oh, that's true. So, one, I don't think he can win the election. I could win the election. Two, I don't think he could actually get the job done that we need to do. For example, COVID. I think we need accountability for what this. government did to this country with the COVID restrictions, mandates, and lockdowns.

Donald Trump is not going to do that. He says he did everything right. He says he saved millions of lives with lockdowns. He claims his MNRA shots, saved 100 million lives. He's not going to clean house at CDC, NIH, FD, or any of that. I will do that. I will get the job done. And a lot of other things we do.

The one thing about me in Florida, and even my critics will acknowledge, if he says he's going to do something, he will follow through and get the job done. So it's about the country. Are we going to get the country turned around or not? I don't think he's a vehicle that's doing. And I have been, when I supported him on the things I liked, I've said it, but I've been critical about the things that he didn't do, and I'll continue to do that.

Okay, but you campaigned for election deniers in 2022. This I do not forgive. To quote the godfather. I mean, Carrie Lake, who said Biden's an illegitimate president, Trump didn't... Well, now she's attacking me, so maybe I did make a mistake there because she's out there saying,

she's trying to say that we mandated Vax in Florida. When we did the opposite, we protected people, even from private mandates. So that may have been... But Trump lost the election, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so why did you campaign for people who said...

Because I wanted to see Republicans win key races. I think it's important now... That's not a deal breaker issue for you? That's not democracy. Well, okay, well, let's go back to 2016. Your friends in Hollywood were cutting ads telling the electoral college to vote against Trump

in the electoral college because it was stolen. They said Russia stole the election. For years, they said that. So don't act like this is like a unique thing in modern history of the country. First of all, Ron, I have no friends in Hollywood. You do remember those commercials, though. I remember them.

Okay. But, I mean, the thing that you seem to stake your campaign on is where woke goes to die. You say that's where... And look, I'm fed up with woke to... That's why I have trouble with friends in Hollywood. I'm an old school liberal, and that's a whole different thing than woke. And I'm sympathetic to you, because, you know,

you very often take on an issue where I feel like, yeah, there is crazy stuff going on in schools. There is crazy stuff. But the problem is it doesn't resonate with a lot of people who don't see it for whatever reason. And so they're like, why is this guy picking a fight with Mickey Mouse? Right? Well, they picked the fight with us, but, well, listen,

So first of all, I do a lot more than just that. I think that's a little bit of a caricature. But this idea of ideology corrupting institutions, I see it in Los Angeles with the amount of crime that's here. And the homelessness, there are people that commit crimes who are not prosecuted like they would be in Florida. Our state's crime rates at a 50-year low. You elect these people like Gascon and what they did in San Francisco.

You can break into somebody's house or mug somebody and you don't end up going to jail. That doesn't work. but that's driven by ideology. So it's not just we're having just a philosophical debate. I think woke ideology is corrupted institutions. I think it's corrupted things like the CDC with how they handled COVID with the nonsense that they did.

So it's a broader issue than just a philosophical fight. You keep wanting to get back to that. And I don't blame you because you're right. We're on the same page there. And I think it's unfair what they did to you because you did handle it better. You did handle it better. You were right.

You were like, let's target the people. protect the people who are most vulnerable, and everybody else can go on with their lives. A little better. You open schools sooner. And a lot of the stuff that's come in, the information we have after now, we've had a few years to look at it,

you were more right, and they won't give you credit for that. Well, it's not about credit for me, though. It's not about credit for me. It's about them admitting that they were wrong, because they are setting us up. If this happened again, they would repeat the same playbook all over again.

And if we don't have accountability, that's what's going to happen. So I'll bring accountability so it never happens in our country again. I saw the New York Times it's such a despicable hit piece on you that I saw

because I forget what the lead headline was, but it was basically Ron DeSantis fucked up the pandemic. And then like at the very end it says Florida's death rate overall was better than the national average. Now if you're going to do an article

if you're going to do an article about Florida and the pandemic, shouldn't that be the lead? Shouldn't that be the lead? Wouldn't that be the head? I mean, talk about bearing the lead? It shouldn't it be that we're the number one state for in-migration? I mean, if we did so bad, people would have been leaving Florida. People are coming, Wells moving into the state. Our economy's done better than any other large state. And education were now ranked, I think, in the top five on most metrics in education. Now, that wasn't true when I was a kid growing up in Florida. So we did it right, but what we did is we understood you can't stop society because of one respiratory virus. That's not even the way to help health overall. You could if it was bad enough, but not that one. Right.

Well, they were wrong on the death rate. They were wrong on closures. They were wrong on everything. And yet we act like, what? We're just going to shrug our shoulders and move along? So, like, that's the part of you I like. And then there's the part of you, like, where you're going after, I mean, your state voted to restore voting rights to felons.

And then through some political bullshit jiu-jitsu, that got undone. No, no, no, that's not true. It is true. No, no. And you're going after people. Now, I mean, you have some sort of... We didn't qualify, though. So that amendment did not include murderers and sex offenders.

So we had sex offenders, convicted sex offenders, who voted, who were not eligible under that amendment, so we held them accountable. But that was absolutely consistent with the law. But there really isn't in-person voter fraud. Like 11 million people voted in Florida. And I think you found 41 people. I mean, that's point... Right, but if you have somebody that's illegally in the country and they vote, should they be held

accountable or not? I think they should be held accountable. That's 0.000-0-0-2%. Not in a statewide race, but we've had local elections decided by 15, 20, 30 votes in the last few years. And so I think we want legal people to vote. If you're not a citizen of this country, you should not be voting in American elections. Okay, but that's not the biggest issue we have. Is it, I mean...

No one's saying it's the biggest. We take on all kinds of issues in Florida. It looks like you're just trying to stop black people from voting. Oh, that's nonsense. I don't think it's nonsense. Black folks don't vote for the Republican Party in very big numbers. But I got a bigger percentage than other Republicans

have gotten when I ran for re-election. Whoopty-do. That's not a... I wouldn't brag about that. We're making progress, man. And then the abortion thing, a six-week abortion ban. I don't get that either. Because six weeks, like if you're...

I know you say it's a case of conviction. If it's conviction, wouldn't it be moment of conception? That's what conviction is to me. Like, if you believe the second, you know, before the guy can get the towel, there's the third person in that room. Well, no. I mean, it's a, so this is a legislative issue,

so they have to figure out what they think. And so the legislature identified the moment where there's a detectable heartbeat as the time where there's legal protections. Now, they did provide exceptions for all the difficult cases that you hear about, but basically once there's a heartbeat, it shouldn't be used as a form of birth control. Okay. So you're going to debate Newsom? We are.

You know he's taller and better looking. Good luck. Thank you for being here. Governor Ron DeSantis, everybody. Good luck out there. All right. Let's meet our panel. Okay.

We're back, and here they are. She is the co-host of the podcast, Getting Hammered. Co-author of End of Discussion, how the left's outrage industry, wow, shuts down debate, manipulates voters, and makes America less free and fun. Mary Catherine Hamm.

and he's the host of the Making Sense podcast, the best podcast where the host isn't totally baked. Sam Harris is over here, ladies, gentlemen. Well, it's great to be back for us. So I want to thank everybody who made this possible to be back. You know, I'm talking about my brilliant staff, writers and non-writers who scrambled the jets so we could be on in two days.

And the union folks who expedited the paperwork so we get back so quickly, so thank you. All right, so I want to talk about Diane Feinstein. That was the big news that happened today. I mean, it's kind of spooky. Our last show, April 28th. And what was the last thing I talked about on the editorial? Diane Feinstein.

And it wasn't just about that she should resign. It was about the fact that people in their Democratic Party were kind of playing an outdated woman card about her. I remember quoting Nancy Pelosi said, I've never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way. Bullshit. Robert Byrds, Dram Thurmond, obviously Biden, but we'll save that to the end of the show.

Our congresswoman here in L.A. said, when women age or get sick, the men are quick to push them aside. When men age or get sick, they get a promotion. Where did that ever happen? Yeah, they just make this shit up. Well, it's the quickest way to sort of get out of trouble is to play the card you have, right? And Menendez is a perfect example.

Senator Menendez this week was like, how could the Democrats push out a proud Latino American who has made it this far in his career? Right? Like, never mind the gold bars. Guys don't pay attention. But it's not a bad play strategically. Right. It's right morally.

Okay. So now our governor says he's going to appoint a black woman to the seat. Do we still need this kind of identity politics as opposed to the best person? Maybe we do? I don't know. I'm amazed that people don't recognize that it's in. to the candidate that gets picked.

I mean, so Biden did that with Kamala Harris. So you say you're going to filter in advance by sex and race. Just pick someone as though they're the best person, and lo and behold, they're a black woman or whatever the template is. It's just, it seems, I mean, it's over. It's not even implicitly insulting. It's actually just right on the surface, and no one seems to comment on it. Well, it's like, it's racism, but for the right reasons.

It's like, it's still the thing. I mean, we still do need to even things out from our respectable past. But then even them out, even if that's your agenda. Just do that and never make it explicit that you cut out whatever, 85% of the contestants in advance. Well, you could make it explicit that you've created a generous pool from which to pick that includes many, many minority folks. That would be easy in the state of California.

It's just, I keep coming back to this concept of the zombie lie. You know, I used to get on the Republicans about it. They still do it. You know, like tax cuts for the rich will increase revenues of zombie lie. That was one that was never was true. Then there are zombie lies that are things that used to be true, but are no longer true. And I think we still get caught in those.

with especially race issues. I saw in the paper, after the 2020 riots, corporate America pledged to hire more people of color, and boy did they. Like 94% or something like that? Of the 300,000 people from S&P companies, I think that's 100 companies that were surveyed, 94%. I mean, I ain't mad at it.

I'm just saying, can we acknowledge that, I mean, if this was such a horribly racist country, could you be guilted into doing this? Right. You know, can we just acknowledge we are in the year we're living in? And not some year that has passed. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know what the remedy is in each case. It's not because, you know, there was a time, I think,

where affirmative action was totally defensible, and you could be honest about it, and you didn't have to. I mean, you're redressing a wrong that was historically obvious, but we have to acknowledge that we're in a different, situation now, we're pretending that there's a disadvantage based on race, I mean, to take one variable. And for basically as long as, virtually as long as I've been alive, that has not been true, right? So it's like this is something, you know, there's no medical school in this

country that is filtering against race to the disadvantage of black people. Quite the opposite. It's quite the opposite. And for a very long time. And so there is a kind of gaslighting when you're pretending the disparity is opposite to what it is. And, I mean, I was amazed at that figure, too. I mean, 94% is amazing. And may I say to the people who are saying, well, three white people are talking about this? Exactly.

So fucking what? White people can talk. I'm sorry, you know, that's just a ridiculous talking point. Like, how could you possibly have this discussion? We can have the discussion. Any person who was here in addition to us might add something to that discussion that we are not adding. but it shouldn't stop people from just talking. You can be cognizant of that without being quite so insulting

as you're pointing out that this can be. In fact, in this case, I think he said he's going to pick a black woman for sure, but just a placeholder. So it's like, well, I'm going to pick a black woman, but I'm probably not going to pick Barbara Lee, who is actively running against two white people because that might give her too much of an advantage to have actual power in the future.

I don't know what the theory is here, but it seems insulting. Yeah. So another zombie lie I was, picking on when we were off with um I saw Barbie which um I enjoyed very much you got to say that part just say that part that was well no it was it was cute I liked it I mean I wasn't I wasn't trying to attack it and it is look give it credit I mean there are hits there are monster hits and then there's phenomenons this is a phenomenon but it is a zombie lie that was the point I wrote a tweet and they all went batch it

about this tweet. Just saying, because I looked up something, that's really what they got mad at. Because the movie is based on the premise that we live in a patriarchy. So let's just talk about. Maybe we do, I don't know. But in the movie, Barbie

goes to Mattel headquarters who made her to confront the patriarchy, which is the boardroom. And she breaks into the boardroom and it's 12 men. The patriarchy. So I got home and I was like, Mattel's a real company.

I bet you you could look up who's on the board. Of course it's like six and six. Maybe it was seven and five or six, I think, but the CEO is a man, but he's on a little. But it was almost or basically even. Then I looked up how many women were added to Fortune 500 board seats

in 2021, I think was the last year I looked up. It's 45%. So maybe not exactly even. But, I mean, if these are the stats, and of course nobody who attacked me engaged with those ideas. Well, the writer Megan Dom, who I think you might have had on the show, she's great. She wrote, you remember America Ferreira's piece, her speech in the film where it was just kind of this anthem for feminism. So Megan wrote it from a guy's point of view and proving that it was really this kind of political pablum that it was a kind of a zombie.

speech because it worked just as well for a guy with almost no changes to the text. So it was... Well, first of all... Except that I regret to inform you, I am the only person on stage who's allowed to talk about this. I felt like, first of all, Mattel's happy to come in for that sort of abuse in the movie because there's a salignment of sort of corporate... views and lefty-leaning activism, and that was sort of packaged into this movie.

I have complicated feelings about Barbie. For instance, I never played with Barbies, but my daughters do, and I was, like, conflicted. And so I got them only Barbies with flat shoes, because that's the secret to feminism, guys. But I think Barbie gave a lot of women feelings, and we were like, why am I having feelings about Barbie? Did I get dressed up as rodeo Barbie with a pink cowboy hat

and go to a movie with my friends? Yes, I did. And some of it really hit me over the head, with the patriarchy, and I found that insulting. But there were parts of it that were a little more sneaky. Things like the fact that that is interchangeable for men, that speech where I went, this is a movie about how being human is hard. And in fact, for men in the current time, and this is what you're speaking to,

which I wish the movie had tapped into a bit more, when it comes to despair, loneliness, suicides in some demos, academic achievement, men are having a lot of problems. And I have three daughters and one son, and I would like them to be equally successful. and have equal chances. And I don't think that my son deserves any sort of comeuppance because things might have been harder

in the past for women. I saw it with my nine-year-old daughter, so I had ralphed my brain into the appropriate shape before seeing it. And I enjoyed it. I loved it. You did? Yeah, I laughed way more than I thought I was going to laugh.

Purposely? No, no. I mean, I just... Listen, I mean, half of it was going over my daughter's head because she's nine, but so I was sort of having my own experience. but, um, yeah, it's interesting to just, I mean, you're, you're, you're, in the most charitable possible mood when you're seeing a movie like that with your daughter. And so it does define experience. And again, I enjoyed it. I just thought it was 2008. You know, it just wasn't up to

the times. Uh, at one point, I remember the Barbies have to like get the Ken's back and they do it by pretending to be helpless about stuff. Like, I don't know how to use a computer. Yeah. And the The moment I saw it with said to me, I don't know any woman who acts like that anymore. So how could a movie that's that, not with the time, be that successful, but I guess people just, they want to believe what they want to believe. It's emotional truth. Yeah, but I do think that could be a critique of both of those gendered stereotypes, right, in some respects as well. And I did, the thing I liked about the movie is that it was interesting where it was allowed to be complicated. And it was not as interesting where we tried to gender stereotype in this really specific.

way, although, like, what is gender anymore anyway? You also can't have two sexes that are at odds, so I don't know. It's confusing in these modern times. Well, I want to show the Lauren Bobart video because it's funny. I just do. So, this is Lauren Bobert about a week

ago watching Beetleges. There you go. Back and to the left. Back and to... There you go, honey. Play hard to get. That's how you do. I mean, let's not gloss up with the fact that she said this was a first date. I love it that on a first date. What is that all about?

Just seeing if she's wasting her time. But I want to get to an important question about this. She said afterward that the lesson she drew from this is, I learned to check party affiliations before you go on a date. And I just want to say that is... Maybe that she was checking party affiliation. Yeah, because the guy was a Democrat. And this was the big lesson she got.

And I feel like this is the exact wrong direction to go in this country. I think Republicans and Democrats should be groping each other, talking to each other. I think we are all too much in our own silos, and our biggest problem is we don't mingle. We think that the other side is deplorable, and the people are not worthy of mingling with and dating. The correct response to TMZ,

have been like, sure, was I bow in the bert at Beetlejuice? Or... Wait, wait. That's a for a bit I've never heard. Yeah, I haven't heard that either. Some people have their names on bills. Some people have different things. Or was I building bridges, right?

Right. No, but I agree with your substantive point. It's a different structure. Okay, but I agree with your point, and there's polling on this that people, because of negative partisanship, continue to think more and more coldly of the opposing party in this country

and they have fewer and fewer friends together. I will say consistently it shows in polling that Republicans actually have more friends or more likely to have Democrat friends than the other way around. Now my liberal friends will say, well, that's because we're awesome and obviously you guys want to be friends with us.

But it might be because you're on one side less open-minded than you give yourself credit for and this actually calcifies your thinking. It means you're surrounded by people who only agree with you. And it turns you cold, colder against the other party, unlike the scene that we just saw. I think there's a difference. I think there's a difference in the

extreme political rhetoric and behavior that's being tolerated in the two parties. I mean, so you go far enough left, you go far enough right, you meet just unacceptable political intuitions and behavior, but the Republican Party has become a kind of personality cult. And we had a sitting president who would not commit to a peaceful transfer power, and we didn't have one. And the party loyalty at this point is predicated on not acknowledging how obscene and dangerous that was.

And so you have someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney who are just exiled as blasphemers in their party. And it's, there's an asymmetry there. It's just there's something, there's an anti-democratic, populist conspiracy addled movement that has to be uh disavowed before you can have a kind of symmetrical okay this is the stuff we disagree about within the origin. The question is though do you put that on every single voter of the party

which i think there's some responsibility for but in your daily life can you have a conversation without doing that the other thing i would say is that people of the left often say yes there is this tremendous asymmetry and i've been a critic forever of all of the things that you have listed, probably to the detriment of my career, since I have a person of the center right, right? But on the other hand, there's a poll out last week that 75% of Democrats believe it's incumbent upon the government to censor hate speech. Hate speech, of course, is whatever they think is hateful, right? Perhaps that might become dangerous. Perhaps that might be seen as non-democratic. There's other places that have been

trying to pass laws where you would actually be a crime to misgender someone. So these things feel very threatening to me, but I will still talk to people who fervently believe those things. But the percentage of Democrats who believe that it should be a crime to misgender someone, I mean, that's got to be down around 8%.

It ain't that small. No, I mean, the polling I'm aware of on this is that you have like an 8% activist class on the left that is driving that particular debate. That issue. But the thing you're talking about censoring speech, that is dangerous because, I mean,

there was just a case, Missouri versus Biden. Yeah. Okay. This was about COVID misinformation, but a lot of the misinformation, turns out was coming from the other side. But you couldn't say it. I mean, that's what this case was about. Big Tech was basically colluding with the government to suppress any speech. This was brought by two very esteemed doctors, and they had a letter that I think was signed by 16,000 doctors and researchers

who said, we are dissenting from what we think is the right way to handle this pandemic. with the masking to the degree it was done, school closings, shutdowns, natural immunity versus vaccination. None of it was crazy stuff. And you're not a lot. That's what you're talking about. That's what's dangerous, I think, from the Democrats, is that a lot of them believe that social media's job is to suppress.

And these are the people who used to be so skeptical of corporate America and the pharmaceutical industry. And now they want the government just to shut down anybody who doesn't agree with? Unfortunately, I don't think there's a bright line here because we have a public health emergency that we're trying to understand, and you have a consensus of a sort forming over here, and you have outlier voices that are getting preferentially amplified by an algorithm that does, this is not just a level playing field where you get to say your piece, I get to say mine. We have a business model that is amplifying divisive lives and misinformation preferentially, right?

So you have a lie that spreads like wildfire, and then you have a patient debunking of that that doesn't spread because it doesn't provoke the same outrage. Except the patient debunking had to be done of the government and of many public health officials. These are truths that were formerly known as conspiracies. And the fact is that we were not able to have an open conversation about it. We did have, you know, very recently the Sackler family,

the maker of OxyContin, find $8 billion, because they knowingly sold their hillbilly heroin. to people knowing they were hooking them on it and killing a lot of people. So it's not like we don't know they're capable of this. We just found out last week. They've known for years that Sudafed and Benadryl are bullshit. Oops.

They don't work, and they still... Half of the ingredients are bullshit. Well, using it as a pill is never worked. Yeah, I mean, the problem is that experts were wrong, and when you talk about an uneven playing field, when the government comes to your social media company is like, ah, it's a nice thing you got going here, but it's a shame if we regulate it.

But I do think you're right about Trump being the biggest threat and the threat to democracy. Nothing is like, nothing compares to that. This is a related threat. I basically agree with that idea, but I do think what happens is if you get so hung up on saying the other side is worse

and therefore off limits for me to engage with, then you never engage. You want to engage. And never, normal people don't engage. And that is actually what makes us come closer to get. If I may interrupt. Now, we have, the biggest story really probably while we were off for these five months was Trump being put on trial or he's going to have, he's got

four trials. He's got a, I gave hush money to a porn star trial. He's got a, I stole documents and put them by the toilet trial. He has a, I asked for 11,000 votes trial and I tried to overthrow the government trial.

So, I just want to say, even if you're a fan, that's a lot of trials. So we thought Since the chances are very good that he will get convicted at one of these, we thought as a public service, because we're always about the public service here. We would put out a little pamphlet called Tips for Donald Trump's selling.

He's probably going to have a cellmate. So these are things you might want to look out for if you are, you know, if you're the person who becomes Donald Trump's unemployed. Don't believe him when he says how many cigarettes he's worth. Explain to him that he's not allowed conjugal visits from his daughter. He loves compliments,

so tell him that jumpsuit really brings out your orange. Don't be surprised if one of his cavity searches turns up Sean Hannity. When he begs some Mexican inmates to help him get over the wall, refrain from pointing out

the obvious irony. Let him know that singing YMCA in the shower might send the wrong signal. Don't get aggravated when he keeps referring to his one phone call as perfect. He's a big eater, so don't be surprised when he takes a shiv and makes it into a spoon. And finally, when he offers to blow you for a Diet Coke, make sure you get the blow job first.

Show his mugshot. I got to say, when they, we've waited for this. A lot of people wanted to see this mugshot. I got to say, he nailed it. I mean, I'm just blown away by that. In his world, that works perfectly. In one take, that is his evil genius. Yeah.

Like, a model could be there for three hours with a professional photographer trying to get, okay, I need a little more. I'm crazy, but I'm going to kill you. And they couldn't have gotten that show. Yeah. So what is going to happen with, no, he's, what if he's convicted? I mean, he's not going to actually go to jail. I mean, he would be.

It's hard to imagine. And then he could be elected president. I'm guessing he would be home confinement running the country from Mar-a-Lago. Right? That is not a joke. It sounds like it should be, but it's... Yeah, no, it's...

I mean, the truth is I can't let myself think that far. I mean, it's really hard. It's really hard to believe we're in this situation. But, I mean, you mentioned Menendez. I thought it was so interesting in this upside-down world we live in where law enforcement now are the bad guys. The FBI is now the bad guys.

So Robert Menendez, obvious crook. I mean, everything but actually having his hand in a real cookie jar. Only the Democrats want him to step down. Not a single Republican is asking him to go. Because, again, an upside-down world, when law and order comes after you,

they're the ones who are suspect. Yeah. Well, and it's all driven by partisan desires, right? Democrats are like, yeah, get rid of this guy because he's now weakened and we have a Democratic governor, and so we could replace him. Republicans are like,

You don't need to get rid of him because he's weakened now, and also we need to maintain this standard where indicted people are perfectly fine to run for office, right? So that's the two sides thinking on this. But the original sin where you talk about law enforcement problems and Republican attitudes toward law enforcement, particularly of the FBI on this stuff, the original sent from both media and the intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement, is the Russiagate stuff. and the reason that so many in the party, and I'm here as the translator because I'm not one of them,

but so many in the party except so much of Donald Trump's behavior, is because the Russia stuff was a lie, and nobody paid for it. No, it wasn't. Well, it wasn't all a lie. It was not all a lie. You guys have been written. Are you guys to do a steel dossier on me? No, no, no.

Some of the steel dossier was true. Okay, you know, this. Like, we did Mueller report for three years. Yes, and Mueller never said he was innocent. And the whole time, like, guys, I don't think he's a Russian plant, and everyone on CNN said is looking at me like I'm crazy, and at the end,

we get to, not much there, there, which was the case throughout. There was a lot there. There was a lot there. It was collusion we never had before. It was unprecedented that a president would do that. He just did it in public because he's insane. You do know.

No, I do think, I think one of the advantages... Of being insane. And most of it, probably none of it was a legal. Right? So, I mean, this was always David From's line, Everything he's doing is in plain view, and it's not illegal. He's just violating every political norm we have. Except there were things that were illegal,

like using the FISA court to spy on American citizens in ways that they should not have done. That was legal, but that wasn't him. That's right. And the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign was partially responsible for funding this dossier, which partially came from, oh, wait for Russian disinformation.

It was a... And it started this cycle of media circle, circle jerk and then we had four years of that. I think it was his own election authority guy who said something like I can't believe I have to explain this, but it is illegal to accept anything of value in an election from a foreign national.

He accepted things of value. His campaign manager was trading campaign information with the GRU agent. That's not collusion with Russia? What about the meeting with Don Jr.? I have dirt on... Just having Paul Manafort run your campaign. And Paul Manafort has been...

did a legal thing, right? It's just like Paul Manafort is like a 200-pound gold bar in the closet. The transgression, the unseemliness of it is right on the surface, given his contacts with Russia. It's not exactly everything they said it was, but it's not nothing. The standard of evidence used for the Russia thing for three, four years versus the standard of evidence used now in media for Biden and Hunter Biden's shenanigans and fairly obvious influence peddling is worlds apart, worlds apart.

And I would just like, and voters deserve fairness in how these two people are treated, they do not get it, and they sometimes don't get it from law enforcement. And that's bad. Yes, there's a lot to entangle here, but I'll completely grant you that if, you know, if Hunter Biden had been Don Jr., if it had been Don Jr's laptop, everything would change in terms of the reception. And that seems like an unfair asymmetry. But the background reality is we have never had a person like Trump in our politics, certainly not in the lifetime of anyone in this studio.

And he has, he has shattered every norm. But we didn't even know how much we relied on norms. I mean, we're a nation of laws, but more important than the laws are the norms. Like, like committing to a peaceful transfer of power when you're one here a president. I mean, that was the most shocking violation of normal democratic. principles. I agree with you about the norms. And here's the problem. A bunch of people, including

in the justice system, looked at Trump and said, he's going to bust all the norms, and you know what we need to do? Bust all the norms to stop him. And that is a very, very unhealthy decision. Unhealthy, I'll get back to that. Got to stop. Thank you. Welcome back. Time for new rules, everybody.

Okay. Let me get back to new rules. All right, new rule. Now that we've got Spiked Seltzer, spiked soda, hard lemonade, spike juice, hard cider, spiked iced tea, spiked energy drinks, spike coffee, spiked coconut water, spike mountain dew, and spiked

juice pouches. Let's just go all the way and spike the tap water. Finally, your tax dollars put to good use. Good schools? No. Safe streets, not really. But where else in the world can you get drunk off the garden hose? No, no rules. Since 2.2 million

migrants are projected to walk into America this year, we need a better plan. than get used to soccer. How about this? Fire the Border Patrol, take down the fencing, and once every single man, woman, and child in Venezuela is here, we go there.

Think of it as a hemispheric house swap. We get your crystal blue waters and white sand and you can help yourself to our tents. New Rule, someone needs to tell the pride community that LGBTQ plus sounds like a video streaming service. Don't get me wrong, I'm down with the cause, but when I hear LGBT

I think gay, but with no commercials. Before you judge how many kids in the U.S. are overweight, check out Australia, where it's reported that childhood obesity will double by 2035. In fact, it's so bad that they're remaking that Merrill Street movie, and now she says, help, a baby ate my dingo. Google it, kids, it's funny. New rule, if, like Virginia legislative candidate, Susanna Gibson, and you've live-streamed yourself having sex,

and also asked viewers to pay you money to perform specific sex acts on chatterbate. You don't have to campaign anymore. I'm already voting for you. Because talk about being responsive to your constituents. Some guy asked you to blow him into reverse cowgirl, and you did. All I won from me was a permit to hook up my solar.

And finally, new rule, someone has to be a woman. has to convince President Biden that if he runs again, he's going to turn the country back over to Trump and go down in history as Ruth Bader Biden, the person who doesn't know when to quit, and so does great damage to their party and their country. All of us who like Joe Biden have been struggling lately with the political situation in the Democratic Party, an incumbent we admire who acquitted himself well in a first term, but who even members of his own. own party don't want to see run for a second,

despite a touching letter of recommendation from Aston Coutcher and Milakuna. I kid, they shouldn't have gotten shit for that. If you ask me, do I think Joe Biden can do the job of president? My answer, is an unequivocal? Yes, he can do the job. Do I love everything?

No. But that's every president. But government work is done in small, quiet rooms, like the Oval Office. And in that setting, Joe's compassion and centuries of experience are pluses. And he's generally made good decisions that got us out of Afghanistan,

handled Ukraine, kept the economy choking, finally got us rebuilding infrastructure, returned a sense of normalcy. There's a term for Joe Biden, but not too. Because while he can do the job, what he can't do is run for it.

Our campaign season is long and it gets icy in New Hampshire. To those who say he beat Trump once, he'll do it again. I say things change. They always do. The parade moves on. 2024 is not 2020 in so many key ways, including, yes, Biden being four years older. You can be a national treasure and still be too old for the job.

If I'm on a plane and the pilot says, this is your captain, Buzz Aldrin, I'm getting off. Mitch McConnell has served Satan well. But when he starts buffering during a speech, and it appears his soul is leaving his body? It's time. I have made it a theme on this show to rail against ageism, the last acceptable prejudice in America.

I've tried to make the argument that judging by age is wrong because we all age so differently. Some people are old when they're 45 and others are spry at 90, so it should always be a case-by-case basis. But the credibility of my argument, against ageism rests on the honest calling out of people when it is time to go.

That's what case-by-case means. At an event last weekend, Biden referred to L-L-Cool-J as L-L-J-Cool-J. Say what you want about Trump, but he remembers Kanye's name. At some point, perception becomes reality. What matters is voters think Biden's too old. What matters is he's going to lose to Trump, who's almost the same age, but his age just doesn't read like Biden's. Maybe it's because Trump is insane.

Maybe it's because he's always a ball of white-hot anger. But for whatever reason, he looks robust, and Joe looks like his own skeletal remains. If this was 1860 when Joe first ran, this would not be an issue. You didn't have to look good, and there was no ubiquitous media to pick on every little mistake. The only people who saw the Lincoln-Douglas debates

were the people who went to. them. But Joe's debates next year will be televised to all, and I don't think he's going to look good. Yes, Trump is old, too, but Trump is like kiss. He puts on the face paint in the wig, and he looks the same as he did in 1978.

Far from being the only one who could beat Trump in 2024, Biden may well be the only Democrat who would lose to him. James Carville told me any centrist Democrat around 50 or 60 would get 55% of the vote, and I believe them. You know, that

future headlines bit we do? Well, the most predictable headline ever is presidential race tied. Two weeks before every election, it's always tied. No matter who is running, the vast majority just vote for the D or the R. But Biden is the one Democrat who gives pause to so many people, even in his own party. Andrew Sullivan makes the necessary point that a new nominee for the Democrats would shift the dynamic immediately. Trump would be the tired, old guy retread hanging onto the past, and the Democrat would now be the future. Let the Republicans be the party with the candidate who babbles nonsense, shouts at the TV, and can't do ramps.

Joe, you did noble service for your country, and you checked that big box, the president of the United States. Of course, as a politician, you're naturally going to say, but the work is not finished. Of course not. It never is. But it's time to let someone else finish it. You don't want to go down as Ruth Bader Biden. America is calling Joe,

and it's saying, that's not our car, Grandpa, we're over here. All right, that's our show. I'll be at the Fox in St. Louis. October 7th. Wow, coming up. The Orphium in Omaha on the 8th

and the NGM Grand in Vegas are never third and fourth. I want to thank Mary Catherine, Sam Harris, and Ron DeSantis. We've got Keegan Michael Key and his wife, Al, Matt Welch, and Sarah Isgar next week. Thank you very much, folks.

Great to be back. Thank you. 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.