Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #638: Andrew Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, Scott Galloway, Jessica Tarlov

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

Bill’s guests are Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, Scott Galloway, and Jessica Tarlov (Originally aired 10/27/23) 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. Exciting day. I know. I know why you're happy today. The Republicans finally found someone who fits the glass slipper for a speaker of the house. Mike Johnson, exactly what I thought. Mike Johnson, never heard of him, but he had, oh, boy, do I like this guy, super duper-upor-Christian. I mean, super-christy.

probably the worst of the election denier. So the Republicans have really found their sweet spot. Loves Jesus, hates democracy. And I got to say, this guy owns it. Because we're just getting to know him, so he's on the shows, and they're asking him about him. He said today, or maybe yesterday, he said, pick up a Bible off the shelf.

I didn't have one, but I get them. And read it. That's my worldview. That's what he's saying. Talk to the hand, the one with the nail in it. Oh, ooh. Mike is... And Mike, he's in a covenant marriage.

I didn't even know what this was. Have you heard of this? It's a thing in Louisiana where he's from. I guess other places. A covenant marriage, like marriage isn't hard enough to get out of? Seriously, this is a covenant marriage makes it very, very, very, very hard. to get divorce. It's for people who hear

until death do you part and say, I need something stronger. And do you like pro-life? He's... Wow. This guy... He says life begins at insurrection. Wow. And he

absolutely hates gay sex, especially when he's having it. Well, you know, these guys are always... No, he wants sex. criminalized gay sex because it makes it hotter. He's telling me, this is

a beaut, this guy. He is written in favor of reinstituting sodomy laws. Sodomy laws. That's laws against anal and oral. I've never understood this about the Republicans either. If you're so against abortion,

why would you be against the two places to do it where you can't get pregnant. I think this is actually a giant gift to the Democrats because, I mean, wow, forget about Republicans coming after your Social Security. Now they're coming after your anal. Finally, something to get the young people to the polls. And it's ironic. Now, we have this guy, who's now the third in line for the presidency, one of the most powerful people in the country. Of course, we saw what the Supreme Court did a couple of years ago with the abortion ruling. abortions have actually increased in America since then

because women go out of state, probably mostly here. It's called abortion tourism, and it kind of makes sense. I mean, when else can you go on vacation and come back weighing less? Okay, so it's Halloween Tuesday. It's an exciting time of year. Or is it now, now known in America, wear the wrong costume and lose your job day. Well, there's a lot of rules, you know,

Anybody hear Sag after it? Because this is Hollywood. There you go. Oh, now we're raising our hands. Interesting. I don't even want to hear. No, I'm just... Well, you know, they're on strike,

and the Union released a guideline. You cannot even dress up for Halloween as characters from struck content. So, you know, you can't go as John Wick, because Candle Reeves is on... Really, you can't go as Barbie. So the actress and actors in this town are all stuck for a costume.

I know one actress, her costume this year. year is the face she had last year. Okay. We've got a great show. Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway are here, but first up, he is the former governor and attorney general of New York, who also served as HUD Secretary under President Clinton,

Andrew Cuomo, and she's formerly Governor Cuomo's top aide, whose new memoir is What's Left Unsaid, My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis, Melissa DeRosa. Please welcome them. Pleasure to meet you. Okay. Glad you guys are here.

I know you don't do this a lot. I must tell you, I always have an open mind about everything on this show. And in the past, I did not do a deep dive into your situation because, you know, I don't have time to deep dive. Now we've done it. We have deep dived.

And I just want to say, there's two sides to every story, but I'll say right up front, my opinion, you guys, you have a side. I do understand why you're pissed. So let me start with you, because the book, very page-turner, and your theory seems to be that there was a takedown of the governor. Let me ask the question I think a lot of people would be asking,

which is why, in a liberal state, a liberal governor, a liberal newspaper, why would they take down their own? I think that the New York Times in particular, which was sort of the driver of this manufactured scandal, in my opinion, has been leading the Me Too movement, has been out front on everything and constantly redefining what it is to have an executable offense. And when we got to this moment, I go through it in the book

where I go through one, two, three, four, five. The moment that was sort of like the pinnacle, what is going on is when they have this woman who the governor had met at a wedding. He was officiating in the wedding. He walked around, kissing everyone in the cheek, taking photographs of someone. He put his hands on the woman's face.

I remember. Front page. And they put this on the front page. And it was just this arms race. The reporters all, it was like they wanted to put a head on the wall. And then you had the far extremes on both sides. I must say when I heard 11 cases. Yep.

And again, this is not deep diving because there's so many of these stories, and I just go by numbers. Like if it's 11, there's got to be something there. Now, maybe there is. Only you know that. You're the only one who knows the whole story here on your side. Obviously, people have different sides. The State Assembly Judiciary Committee,

their view was damning. It said overwhelming evidence that the former governor engaged in sexual harassment. I mean, why would, why is that? Because they're in on it too. Well, because they were going to affirm her report, right? They asked for the report, yes. They were going to reform. They were just going to, frankly, go through a process

because she was getting serious questions about the report, right? As soon as anybody read. What's right, Leticia James? Lettisha James. She's now going after Trump in New York. Yes. Okay. But she's the one.

You're saying, this is the thesis of your book, basically had it out for you. Well, she had it in for her, right? She wanted my job, which was part of the motivation here. But she put out a report. She said 11. That was the brilliant manipulation of this, because you and everyone else said, oh, 11 cases,

even if half of them are wrong. Right. 11 of so many. Turn the page. I don't even have to bother reading the report. That was the manipulation of the media put together with the fact that the media isn't really going to question any of those claims anyway, right? Because the media now is a resonator for the partisan side. And on the left, they're not going to question any of.

accusation of sexual harassment. If anyone read the report, which three days later, the Daily News actually reads the report and says, hold on a second, because even the report itself doesn't justify the headline. I must admit, it is just not the media that I grew up with. It just isn't. I mean, I remember watching all the president's men

and Ben Bradley, you know, played by Jason Robarts, And he says to the reporters a couple of times, you don't have it. You don't have it yet. I feel like that is what's missing, that idea that you have to have it. No, in everything, they were sourcing, you know, blind sources. They weren't asking for any corroboration.

They were turning the other way when there was clear manipulation and lies, and people were lying about the terms that they left the office and tweeting things. They asked me to sign an NDA that was provably not true. And to question was to smear, and you weren't allowed to ask any questions, and if you did that, you were victim-shaming. And the problem with the Me Too movement, in my opinion at this point,

is that we've lost our footing. Rape is the same as kissing someone on the cheek. It all just gets thrown into the same pile and that you should resign and you should be canceled, and that's the end of it. But, I mean, here's a line from your book. The report came out, went to four DAs, I think. Five.

Five district attorneys, yep. And nobody brought a case. Correct. You said, of course not, you're talking to someone in the office when they told you this result. You said, of course not because kissing someone on the cheek is not a crime. Neither is putting your hands on someone's face at a wedding, gripping someone's shoulders at a public event, or patting their stomach as you walk through the door.

I've got to stop you at stomach. I mean, you almost had me with some of these other ones, but I... Don't touch my stomach. Seriously? Fair enough. Okay. But see, I think this is, and this is, you know, I don't, again, only you know. But at very least, don't you think you kind of didn't get the memo when the Me Too thing happened?

And you're like, I get it. We're of a different generation. A lot of this is generational. The kids don't want to be touched. They just don't. You know, it's like the public space, I mean, private personal space is just different to different generations. You're old school. And, you know, I just think you didn't.

understand that. Well, I got the memo. Maybe not the weekly updates, but I got the memo. And I got it intellectually, but it can be carried to an absurd extent. And when you say generational, I think it's partially generational, but it's not all young people. It's generational slash political. You know, there's a political cast to this opinion also. But I understand that fully. I've heard it in stereo now, right? But what's chilling to me here, Bill, is this is the cancel culture on steroids

at the highest level with the Justice Department, right? And the cancel culture just triggers, now, manipulated 11 cases, trigger the cancel culture. Everyone has to be first before they get accused by a women's group of not moving fast enough. President of the United States within hours says, you have to resign. But I didn't read the report. But it doesn't matter.

You have to resign. And then it's dominoes among the Democrats, right? And it's not until three days later where your line, you don't have it. No reporter read it. Okay, so let me go through something. These are just things that are factual, because again, we've spent all week deep diving into this. Just so people know, I'm not carrying water for you two. I'm just giving people, because I didn't hear these things either.

There was one woman was caught lying, one of the accusers. She said dates that have happened that they proved could not have happened. Another one was previously accused, credibly, of making false sexual harassment accusation in college. I never read that. Somebody was on a rope line, said something happened. That, they proved, was a lie. Again, I'm sticking just to the factual ones. Something happened in an elevator,

and there was a witness, did not corroborate. One of them said, he harassed me in the office for years. Everyone knew it, but there were no corroborators on that one. So these are just things you may not have heard. That's why I'm telling you. And then there are things that just struck me as the generational thing. that these are some of the... I mean, this rises to the level

that you even talk about it. Eye contact. You made eye contact. What the fuck? I don't do that anymore. I don't do that anymore. I've not looked anyone in the eye. Well, there's something you probably... Look, I have a line from you.

Somebody told me that, and I looked it up. On TV, when you were taking a COVID test in May of 2020, you said, nice to see you, doctor, you make that gown look good. Don't do that shit. You can't do that. That's just, you're just, I feel like, I feel like both generations are giving away their flaws.

Your generation, our generation, you know, we were too open, and the other one is too sensitive. Let me just, some of these other ones. He touched my back and said, hey, you. made a marriage joke in the car. A marriage joke, and I read what the joke was. It was what anybody would make about joke. Why get married, you know, the sex is worse?

It's like male men make these jokes. You know, I'm glad that there was a Me Too movement. It was a necessary corrective. I also don't want to live in the Soviet Union. He kissed me on the cheek. I remember when it kissed on the cheek was the defense. before I didn't do anything wrong. Kiss me on a cheek in the sexual manner.

I don't know how you do that. Kiss me on both cheeks while we were looking at flood damage. I mean, it's just some of it is just so. And then there's others that there are, like you said, you groped them. Like you actually groped. Serious accusation. Went to the district attorney. Right.

Well, nobody, there's no pretty held in the room. So I'm just asking you. looking you in the eye, eye contact. Did you ever actually grope anybody? No. Short answer, no. And even that story was problematic. And that's why the district attorney didn't bring a case.

Five district attorneys went all through this. Didn't bring a single case. Okay. So Biden, like you said, he kind of like abandoned you. Where are you with him now? I mean, he is the president of your party. I've said that I don't think he should run. I think he did a good job, but I don't think he can win at the current situation.

I think Biden, on these issues, I believe we now have fear-driven politics, okay? On the right and the left. And the moderate Democrats are afraid of that far left. So when you say sexual harassment, they right away are ready to jump, right? and that can be manipulated, by the way. This canceled culture, it's a loaded gun, and they can use it against anyone anytime, even for their self-interest. But I think what Biden's calculus was,

he was accused of Tara Reid, fingers in the vagina. Sorry, Mom. Other women came out, he smelled my hair, etc. He wanted quickly to distance himself from this, which is ironic because, the same attorney who represented the Tara Reid case is the main attorney who drove this case against me. And he could have said, you know what, I went

through this. Let's take a deep breath and actually get the facts before we ask a governor to resign. So would you be running against him right now if all of that? Probably. You would. Even with him sitting in office? Probably. And do you think some other Democrats should do that? I think there should be a Democratic Party. All right. But let me if I can.

For two reasons. One, because I don't, I don't know that candidate Biden is the strongest candidate that we can put up, and frankly, I doubt it. Secondly, and even more importantly, I think the Democratic Party has to engage with real people and real voters on a different level. I think they're two. much in Washington, there's too much Trump is no good and Trump is a bum. You can't run on banking that the other guy is going to lose. You have to have an affirmative strategy to win. And the truth is there has been a paralysis of government, right? You have social division, political polarization, equals government paralysis. And that is on the ground. And they have to see that and they have to

answer that. They have to answer voters who, on the way to the studio today, Bill, we're passing these tent cities for homeless people and like I think is, are we at the studio set? Is this a science fiction movie, right?

People are living this. Yes, we want to help homeless, mentally ill people. They have civil rights. I get that. But they have human rights. And this is the way we treat mentally ill homeless people. You can sleep on the sidewalk and you can eat from the garbage. We have a real crime problem in this nation.

Well, after George Floyd, everybody hates police, yes, you need better police and better trained police, but defund the police with the three dumbest words ever uttered by the Democratic Party. Well, this has to be aired. This has to be vented. We have a migrant problem where governor of Texas is deciding where migrants go, across the country. Sounds like the issues are still on your mind.

A little bit. I'm glad about that. We ran out of time. You have to come back because I didn't ask you about COVID. We've got to do that again. But I appreciate you doing it this time. Thank you very much. Let's meet our panel.

Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it. Okay. Hi. Okay. He is Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School. The business is the host of the Prof G-G-Pod with Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway is back with us.

How are you? Okay, she's a co-host of the five on Fox News and head of research at Bustle, Jessica Tarlov. Jessica, how are you going? Finally got you here. Yes. Okay, so I want to start off with this Mike Johnson. I know everyone is saying, Mike Johnson, my insurance agent? No, the other Mike Johnson, he's the Speaker of the House now.

So I've been using this very slow-moving coup about Trump since before he got elected the first time. And a lot of people were laughing. I see a lot of people use it now. And every time we don't completely lose our way of government, somebody says, oh, well, where's your slow-moving coup now? It's slow. That's my answer. It's slow.

But what happened this week, I remember I did a very dark editorial, like, 2020, like the last one of the year after that election saying, because we all thought the republic was going to win. And I said, what's going to happen is that the people who were not in place in 2020 that Trump tried to get his bidding to overturn elections, John Raffsenburgers of the world, who said, no, I can't find you votes. They're all going to get replaced, and it didn't happen then. But that's kind of happening now with Mike Johnson, the ultimate election denier, and now all

the Republicans, it took them 22 days to get this guy, but now they finally got the guy who's Trump's guy. You know, it takes time to get your people to infiltrate them into these positions. But I'm sorry, I think that thesis still holds. And I think, is this the moment, let me ask you the question, the Republican Party is just the MAGA party now, right? I think so. I felt that way for a while, and there were a few kind of glimmers.

And I think Kevin McCarthy was like this fancy, shiny object that a lot of people saw. I've never heard him describe that way. He's handsome. He's charming. He's the number one Republican fundraiser out there, right? Even in the last quarter, he raised $14 million. He's the Nancy Pelosi of the other. side in terms of raising money.

Wow. I don't, I don't, this is the side of him I never thought of. Well, that's what I'm here to deliver. I see. No, I just, having spent a lot of time in the conservative ecosystem, these are things that I pay attention to. Right. Why is this one more useful than this one, for instance?

And Kevin McCarthy comes off as someone normal. He is not normal, right? He's someone who had a day where he said, you know, Donald Trump is responsible for January 6th, and the next day he was at Mar-a-Lago, throwing back martinis and hanging out with the crew. So, but this guy also has a sheen to him, right? He doesn't present, like, what you would think. Last week we thought it was going to be Jim Jordan, right? Has no proper clothes, you know, sits like this, whatever. And then we get this guy who's a lawyer, who has a long career of going after these kind of social issues. You already mentioned it in the monologue about the sodomy,

law is criminalizing homosexuality. He was in the election integrity front. He wasn't just someone who signed on. He was an architect of the plan to get our votes thrown out in Pennsylvania and Georgia and Michigan. He is so much more frightening in that sense. But I do think, and obviously I want to hear what you guys think about this as well, I think it is a good thing for Democrats that he was made speaker because everything is laid bare now. If you listen to his interviews, you know exactly who this party is. And Democrats can run against that. It's harder to run against Kevin McCarthy, who might feel more normal to you. But we keep hoping, oh, this time it'll show them for who they are. This is just enormously

disappointing. We are normalizing climate change. We are normalizing anti-Semitism, and we are normalizing a kicking out of the legs of the stool of democracy, central to our democracy, regardless of what you think about our country. It's the best of its kind, so far. hands down, democracy, the pillars of that are one, the peaceful transfer of power. And this guy was an architect of trying to arrest that, and a society that is secular. And when a guy gets this nod and says that God ordained it, I'm like, well, boss, whose God is that? Because this is, the whole point here is that we separate church and state, that we believe

in the peaceful transfer of power. And the reason this guy is speaker is none of us had the time to read his resume and realize he's David Duke liked. Well, we did now. Well, I don't know if he's David Duke. I read today he has an adopted black son. I don't think David Duke would do that. But he is a religious nut.

He was the lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom. This is from their literature. They seek to recover the robust Christian-Domic. I don't know that word. You're a professor. Maybe you do Christian-Domic theology of the third, fourth. and fifth centuries. You know, maybe the fifth.

But the third and fourth. I mean, he uses the phrase the so-called separation of church and state. This, see, this is the alliance of, this is, I hate to, you know, fascism,

the word is thrown around, but it's always the far-right church folks meet with the corporate power folks. That's Mussolini. That's all these fascist states. And this is now that, and of course Trump doesn't give a shit either way about religion. He'll say whoever likes him, he will, sure, I'm down with, so he's, of course,

going to just cave on all this religious nonsense from the fifth century we're going back to now. So, um, look, the biggest threat I think to civilization right now isn't a murderous autocrat, Putin. That's a threat. Or jihadist, that's a threat. The biggest threat, I believe, is political extremism in the greatest, force in the world. And that is on the far left, we have apologists for terrorism, and on the far right, we now have a speaker who is claiming that school shootings are a function of them teaching evolution. We are literally being torn apart internally, and we no longer are going to have the

fabric and the muscle to occupy the position we command, and that is the greatest force in the history of the world. This is our problem. We're rotting from the inside out. When you're this much of a religious fanatic, there is no room for real democracy. That's not what you believe. And he said it today. Look in the Bible. That's my worldview. And I was reading about this horrible shooting in Maine.

Yeah. And I heard, you know, we don't know much about the guy yet, but apparently he heard voices. And I thought, is he that different than Mike Johnson? I mean, degree, yes, but it's thinner than you think. It's, again, a much prettier packaging. of a lot of the insanity that we see, unfortunately, showing up on cable news regularly when there's another tragedy. I don't want to say that we have become immune to this.

I thought it was a big deal, for instance, that Congressman Golden in Maine, the Democrat who had always opposed assault weapons bans, came out tearfully and said, I made a mistake. This is what we need now moving forward. And hopefully more people come to that. You see conservatives unknowingly or unwittingly actually endorsing red flag laws, saying, like, oh, this guy was committed involuntarily. How is it possible that he was able to go out and get a gun?

Well, in a lot of states, that's how the laws are constructed, and Republicans are in place to ensure that that never changes because they get the NRA dollars, and that's how lobbying works. And it's really a sickness. The fear I have is that the NRA and the far right will immediately go to mental illness. And the reality is 92% of mass shooters the day before would not be qualified as mentally ill. And we do not have a monopoly on mental illness. We do not over-index in video games.

We do not over-index on fatherless homes. What we over-index on is access to assault weapons. And any discussion around mental illness or strengthening schools, sure, it's great to have empathy for the mentally ill. Agreed. But the mentally ill are more likely to be subjects of violence, not perpetrators of violence. We have a monopoly on one thing.

In research, you look at variables, you look at what's different. and the one thing that's different. The one thing that is different here is we give the mentally ill and the non-mentally ill access to assault weapons. Full stop. Everything else is a misdirect.

But aren't there laws already that prohibit the mentally ill from getting done? And 92% wouldn't qualify as mentally ill and would still have access to the assault weapons. They used to shoot 50 people instead of one. In 1997, there was a mass shooting. in the UK, and they said, okay, no more assault weapons.

The same thing happened in Australia. And guess what happened? No more. I understand. It's just very hard to define someone as mentally ill because we're all a little crazy. Agreed. And so before they do something crazy,

agree. But we say that, and I'm not into suspending people's constitutional rights. There are some amendments that I'm less fond of than others, but I get that we need them all. But, you know, we say the day before, right, wouldn't have qualified. And then by the day after, we've gone through manifestos, social media feeds that are covered in anti-Semitic, racist, bigoted, garbage, hangs out in in-cell

communities, right? All of these things. And it's not video games. That's my favorite when they say, like, oh, he's on Nintendo too much. It's like, no, he's hanging out in chat rooms with other people who are aspiring to become mass murderers. So that's information that we could know the day before on that day where we said he wasn't mentally ill. And that is on law enforcement. If we're not going to get better gun laws, and I know President Biden fought and he got bipartisan gun legislation, and that was a win or as good of a win as you could expect to have. But the FBI needs to do better with this. Right. The information's out there. Okay. I'm going to interrupt to celebrate Halloween. It's Halloween time of year. And, you know,

this time here, there's always these, I've been going to. the haunted houses. I mean, it's one of the big thrills. Yeah, there's lots of them out there. And I went to one this week. Boy, I tell you, they have really changed. Because mostly it's for teenagers now, you know, and I didn't realize the things that scared us.

I really don't, not the same things that scare the teenagers. Would you like to see some of the things I saw? Okay, so here are some of the things I saw in the closet house this year. Oh, this was very scary. to the kids. It was a call from an unknown number. Really, really frightened them

very much. Oh, yes, this was terrifying. The bathrooms are labeled men and women. When I used to go, there was always a guillotine. That was always a very scary thing. They have one, and this one. It's a guillotine that cuts off Wi-Fi service. Also, I remember they always had vampires, Dracula's vampire, bride and here she's a stay-at-home mom. I also remember always being

very scared by the behind this door thing that they had. And this one they had behind this door a boss who tells you to do something and doesn't ask for your feedback. It's just terrifying. They also had the corridor of comedians working on new stuff. They had the hall of the hall of direct eye contact. Oh, and I'd say

maybe it's because all the movies The thing that always scared me the most in these haunted houses was the zombie. And here they had a zombie who doesn't realize skinny jeans haven't been cool since 2018.

All right. All right. So, we started to get into this, I think, with Mike Johnson a little bit. I noticed the first thing he said was pro-Israel. And I did the last two weeks

lot on Israel in this country and trying to get people to understand some of the history there. It's not working. Colleges are not backing down the kids. There's a banner. I don't know if we have a picture of it. I think it was a George Washington University. It said glory to the martyrs, to our martyrs and, you know, free Palestine. There it is.

Glory to our martyrs. They put it on the... In America? These are our martyrs? You know, free Palestine from the riveted? the sea, which means Israel does not exist anymore. You know, I keep saying

and I don't think they understand the history. They just have this view that whoever is poorer and browner must be right, and whoever is richer and whiter must be wrong. And that's pretty shallow. What are your thoughts on this horrible

situation? I've been talking about it straight for two and a half weeks since it happened. It has been nice to have a moment of political unity, at least. I'm not a Gen Z Democrat, so as an elder millennial, I

sound morally a conservative these days, and it's been hilarious. My Jewish liberal friends will text me and they'll say, oh, this is where you go in the afternoon, because they never watched Fox before, and suddenly there... And I'm like, that's why my hair and makeup always looks so good. But

it's completely heart-wrenching as a Jew, and just as someone who believes in democracy and not committing genocide. And I don't know why more Palestinians, and I said this about Rashida Salib, for instance, who obviously just has a completely separate agenda on this, doesn't take the opportunity for an educational moment

about the difference between the Palestinian people and a terrorist organization. Also, this word... I remember when the woke assholes took over the word violence and things that weren't violent, like words, it's not violence. Like words in a script, that isn't violence.

It could possibly incite violence, but you could say that about a lot of things. Now they've done it with this word genocide. It has a very specific meaning, and they just throw it around willy-nilly. You know, homicide, to kill your fellow man, fratricide, to kill your brother, patricide, suicide.

These all have very specific meanings on who we're killing. That's the side part of it. Genocide means you're trying to kill the entire race of people. Israel has never, if they wanted to, they could. They're not doing that. So this word genocide, it's got to stop.

The other term that's been perverted is war crimes. Israel is accused of war crimes. And that's a real accusation, because in Israel there are war crimes. If someone in the Israeli defense forces slaughtered a young man and then sent that video, recorded it, and sent it to his parents on his phone. If someone in the Israeli defense forces

killed children in front of their parents and then killed them, they could go to jail. They could be in prison. There's no such thing as a war crime in Hamas. So the very notion that you believe you're registering an insult against Israel when you say that acknowledges you're talking about a superior society. And if you want moral clarity around who we should back

in war where there's a lack of moral clarity, decide or uses a litmus test, what would each party do if they were in charge? So how is this going to affect the race politically as we come up on another election year, where the Democrats, the liberals, seem to be on the side of the terrorists? I mean, I can see Mike, what is his name, Johnson?

As he's just as crazy as he is like, yeah, but we're not so crazy as to side with terrorists. Yeah. You know, yeah, I'm crazy. You want to see real crazy? I mean, that's, that argument is going to resonate with a lot of people. It's very hard considering the backdrop of what's going on here with the Dobbs decision for interest. For example, what's going on with guns, climate.

I have this thing I call like the morality pie, which is the social issues, the things that usually don't sway elections. But Democrats now own all of it with guns and climate and abortion, election integrity. and Republicans have really struggled to run against that, even if they're winning on the economy, which they happen to. So if it is a national security election, which I don't project that it will be, I think it's going to be very tough for Biden then in re-election.

I don't foresee that happening. We're also a year out. And if you look at who actually thinks that Biden isn't doing a great job, it's a very small demographic. And you touched on this last week, that it's people who have a TikTok feed, right, that are telling them absolute garbage about what's going on. And I don't think that the Republicans, frankly, are smart or adept enough to be able to take

advantage of that, especially when they're saying yes to Israel. And Mike Johnson says no to Ukraine. And that's part of the same. But this is our, this is Biden's best moment. We have a proud legacy of deciding that when there's one side that is promoting genocide, which is different, we backed the other ones. And we've sent two air carrier strike forces over. there, and we have a proud legacy of backing the other side and delivering a level of violence

that ensures the people who decide genocide is court of their constitution, that we not only win that war, but we convince them that they lost. And I think that's what I'm going to do. Okay. So, Scott, I have to, this, there was absolutely no segue to this, but I just, I have to ask you about this because I read you, this is you, this last. week and I just have to get the explanation. You say Ozempic which is the weight loss drug and with I get there's three there's

OZempic Wagovi and Monjaro. I think the people naming these are on drugs. But you say OZembek will have a bigger effect on society than AI. Since we've come off to Savannah we've had a dearth of salt, sugar and fat, mating opportunities, play to learn, and with institutional production, our instincts haven't caught up to our modern economy. The result is alcoholism, obesity. 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese. 70% Americans aren't anything. $1.7 trillion in health care costs. This bullshit on the left that when you're overweight, you're finding your truth. No, you're not. You're finding diabetes and a ventilator. This has an enormous opportunity to general military.

McDonald's are essentially litmus tests on obesity in our nation. More people die in the pandemic of obesity than in any year during COVID. The bottom line bill, this is scaffolding on our instincts, to upgrade our instincts to our institutional production. No one ever walks into an RBS looks around and says, this was a good idea. I don't know about that. Okay.

First of all, you're not explaining why that would have more of effect than AI. Also, I think what people are not understanding here is that this drug, this whatever they are, Ozempic, Wagovi, I guess that's the same drug. They're not just to stop you from eating. They work on any kind of craving. It's a craving suppressor. Right. So that's what makes this much more interesting and consequential.

Drugs they work on. Alcohol, gambling, social media, which could be the worst addiction of all. They think this can work on all. So it's kind of like rewiring our brains or unrewiring the fucked-up wiring that's gone on from social media especially. 60 people on these drugs, people on these drunks are drinking 60% less alcohol.

They're not biting their nails. It's affecting the economy. Planes are using less fuel. I'm not kidding about that because people are in it. But to your earlier question, Goldman Sachs estimates that will add $700 billion to the economy over 10 years, of AI. We spend $1.7 trillion a year on obesity-related. We've normalized the industrial

food complex that makes a lot of high-margin billions addicted to you to shitty food and then hands you off to the diabetes industrial complex for statins and knee replacements. This will have a bigger impact on the real economy than AI. So it sounds like we should put it in the water. Because everybody's got something they're addicted to. It does. It feels to me and I know me in such. expert and haven't looked into it as deeply as Scott, but there are so many unanswered questions still about these drugs, the long-term

effects, there are studies, thyroid cancer and mice when they're given this. It is also hugely expensive, is insurance for I mean, you talk about it? And they have no clue why it works. Now, I looked into that. That's not odd in medicine, which is

one reason I'm a medical skeptic, and I think everyone should be. They don't know why aspirin works, but they are clueless as to why it works. But the effective aspirin, and we all love a good aspirin if you have a headache, right, is... No. It's so much more minor than you show up at work the next day, and you're half the size that you work. Right.

I don't recognize so many of my colleagues now. Really? Because so many people are on it? Well, no one admits it either. They're like, oh, my God, I gave up gluten. I'm like, excuse me. Okay. Before we run out of time, Dean Phillips.

What? He's the new Mike Johnson. In other words, the new guy I never heard of. Better name, though. In Congress, he is a Democrat who is running against Biden. So there is a challenger, Dean Phillips. He's from Minnesota. He's Jewish.

He's 54. Did I mention he's 54? And he loves Biden. He says exactly what I say. Did a great job, but don't do it again. That's right. Family, self-made millionaire from families in the organic vodka business. Dean Phillips, I'm getting behind him for President of the United States.

How about you? Do you know anything about him? Yeah, more than I know about Mike Johnson two days ago. Should we welcome this? Is this good? I guess when I was listening to your interview with Governor Cuomo, who was saying that we need a lot of, primary, and that doesn't take away from anything that Biden has accomplished, which I think we all agree is a tremendous amount. The issue with what Dean Phillips is doing is, A, there are a lot of kind of,

like Steve Schmidt is a senior advisor to him. I got an email today from Andrew Yang, who has not revealed himself, I think, to have the best interests of the Democratic Party winning elections at heart. In 2019, he was maxed out donation from Harlan Crow, who bankrolls Clarence Thomas. You know, there are things about him that I don't like. I appreciate the enthusiasm, and these are issues we should be talking about, but every vote in 2024 is going to count. And if we're losing, you know, the TikTok Hamas vote... I love him.

I love Dean Phillips. You don't love it. Because nobody knows who the fuck he is, and that's good. You know what I know about him? He's 54, and he's got a D next to his name. He's already got half the votes, and he doesn't have any of the baggage of the other guys. Okay, we've got to go to new rules. Thank you very.

New rule, with all that's going on in the Middle East, Americans must take time out to thank Mexico for being such a great neighbor. You too, Canada, but we never did anything to you. But Mexico? We stole half their country. Arizona, Utah, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Colorado, Colorado, Oklahoma, California, all the way up to Wyoming. And the only revenge they ever took was. to give our tourists occasional diarrhea. Muches

graces, amigos. New Roe, you can ask me to accept all cookies, or you can say, we value your privacy, but you can't do both. I'm sorry, that's... That's like Long John Silver, saying, we value your health, now eat whatever the fuck this is.

In general, I went to the new Taylor Swift movie, and I have one thing to say, white people, you have to stop yelling at the screen. Neuro the moisturizer industry has to admit that at this point, they're just making those ingredients up. Yes, our hydrating formula is a max of Guangchung root and bucolic acid with absolutely no carboglysisides.

Or it's loaded with carboglycicirides, whichever you think is better. It doesn't matter. Here's a close-up of Anna Diarmus splashing water on her face. Now give us 50 bucks for an ounce of Juergens. New Rule, stop making your hot sauce about my ass. Ass in the tub, ass in hell, ass in the ER, ass blaster, hogs ass, dumbass, smack my ass, kiss your ass goodbye. Hey, hot sauce, I'm not looking for love. I'm just trying to win a bar bet. And finally, New Rule, it's time to admit that here in America, there really is such a thing as the deep state.

But it's not the one Maga Nation is freaked out about. The FBI is not a bunch of closet radicals. It's a bunch of guns. who ironed their underwear. Washington is a city full of big stone buildings, full of bureaucrats, but they're not plotting against real Americans. They're issuing passports,

cutting social security checks, running the census, updating maps, buying bullets for Ukraine, inspecting dog food, ordering blue plastic gloves for the TSA, and measuring the methane

in cow farts. But there is a deep state, which is the bureaucratic class that justifies its existence by making up new rules, and that's my job. It's the vast network of regulators, administrators, inspectors, contract reviewers, project managers, fee accessories, special commissioners, zoning officers, and consultants whose jobs seem to be to make sure nothing ever happens and then charge you for it. The people who answer the phone, permit office, how may I hinder you?

15% of workers in America work for the government. That's 24 million people with one shared vision to find you if your mailbox is too big. They say a conservative is a liberal who just got mugged. It could also be a liberal who just got cockblock trying to remodel a porch. Oh, yeah. Or got a parking ticket because their car was facing out instead of in.

Last year, Wyoming began construction on the largest wind farm in North America that will power two million homes in Arizona, Nevada, and California, and to think it only took 18 years. Not to build it, to approve it. 18 backlogged, knuckle-dragging, pencil-pushing, thumb-twaddling, ball-scratching years to finally get to yes.

When they started doing the paperwork, Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend wasn't even born. And how ironic, with all the talk about the urgency of switching to green energy, are a deep state of petty tyrants, wasted almost two decades on permitting and nitpicking over the environmental impacts and social effects of the very thing that would most positively impact the environment. Semaphore estimates that if the red tape could be cut in everything

that's currently stuck in the renewable queue, the United States would be 80% zero carbon in seven years. The enemy to clean air isn't just big oil, it's big permitting. It's not that America isn't able to get anything done. It's that we're not allowed to. Of course, this should be consideration of the environment on everything we build, but as so often happens on the left, they seem to have no ability to recognize when they've taken a concept way too far

and are in fact hurting their own cause. America's become Gulliver, the giant that got tied down with a thousand tiny ropes by Lilliputians, a horde of little people who do big damage. Build back better. Sounds good. So does shovel-ready jobs? Yeah, exactly.

As Barack Obama once said, one of the biggest lessons he learned as president was there was no such thing as shovel-ready projects. Environmental impact statements used to be a few pages long. Now, there are thousands of pages of legalistic nonsense and take an average of four and a half years to complete with thousands of bureaucrats filling out millions of paper forms that kill hundreds of forests to answer the question,

is this good for the environment? In San Francisco, the city's so nice, he'll step in poop twice. There's an area where homeless people were urinating and defecating, and it was starting to annoy the people breaking into cars. So the city tried to build a public toilet last year, but then gave up when the cost hit one. 1.7 million. Not 1.7 million for a public toilet system. 1.7 million for one toilet. And this wasn't some magic toilet that catches your phone when you drop. So then a private company

took pity on San Francisco and offered to build them their toilet for free. But after, quote, project management, construction, management, architecture and engineering fees, permits, civic design review, surveys, contract preparation, and cost estimation, the free toilet was still going to cost almost a million dollars. You know, if you tack on fees like that, you're not a city, you're an airline. It feels

like San Francisco is actually proud of being impossible. Asked about the toilet, a spokesman for the Department of Public Work, said we are a city of public input. Okay, but I'm stepping in public output. Meanwhile, the

median time to get approval to build a house there is 627 days. That's 217 days longer than it took to build the Empire State Building. You need 87 permits. 15 from the Planning Commission, 26 from the Public Utilities Commission, and the Fire Department, 19 from building inspectors, 17 from the public works, 10 related to public spaces, and one from a guy in a T-shirt that says federal boob inspector. It's no wonder that in 2021, San Francisco issued only 2,000 permits for new homes. Sure, there are people living in the streets, but that's because we want to make sure the apartments they don't live in are perfect.

I don't fear AI anymore because it couldn't possibly be any more robotic than the humans who run things now. So let me finish with this. Not that there was any reason to build it in the first place. and not that there would be any reason to do it again. But just as an exercise in realizing how far we've progressed, as the can-do people, I think we should all try to imagine how it will go down if we tried to sculpt Mount Rushmore out of a mountain today.

First, we'd have to make the mountain handicap accessible so we could hire handicapped people to work on the side of a mountain. Then there'd be a 10-year delay while we studied the effect of construction noise on the mating habits of woodchucks, then another 10 years to obtain ethnically sourced dynamite and find a sculptor who doesn't only work from home. And then another two years to apologize for being on Indian land.

And finally, after 50 years in a cost that had ballooned to $100 billion, we'd have half a nostril, and it wouldn't be Lincoln. It'd be Shea Guevara. All right, that's our show. I'll be at the NGM Grand in Vegas, November 3rd and 4th. Watch the Club Random podcast on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcast. I want to thank Scott Galloway, Jessica Tarlow,

Melissa DeRosa, and Andrew Cuomo. Now go watch overtime 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 demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.