Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #659: Eric Schlosser, Douglas Murray, Frank Bruni

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

Bill’s guests are Eric Schlosser, Douglas Murray, Frank Bruni (Originally aired 5/10/24) 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. Thank you, people. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Oh, I know, I know. It's exciting. It's very, well, it's Mother's Day Sunday, isn't that? Yeah. Do the right thing.

pick up the phone and call your mom. Or if you're Gen Z, just go upstairs. I kid the kids. They love it. I'm telling you. Yeah, mothers are a little different in Texas this year. It's called, if you don't go through there, you'll be in jail day. And Christy Noam, her kids got her a love. What? Everybody celebrates mothers. They got her a lovely gift.

From a shoe store. Her favorite brand, Hush puppies. But let's get to what you came here to hear about. Stormy Daniels, this is the week in the Trump trial. We finally heard from Stormy Daniels. Trump posted, The whole world is watching. Oh. I hate to tell you, Don, not even your family is watching.

But Stormy had a lot to get off her chest. I mean, she... No. curious. We heard all about her background. She grew up in Louisiana. She started dancing at the strip clubs at 18, moved into adult films at 23. What

in Louisiana they call the career fast track. I get Louisiana. I love Louisiana. But then we got to, you know, we had to hear about the actual sex with Donald Trump. And she said, well, it was not exactly consensual. It was

unwanted, but she did not resist. what most women call married sex. And now, of course, the looming question is, will Trump take the stand? And we know for sure he will not because he said he would. That's how we know for sure he will not. But come on, Trump take the stand,

he put his hand on the Bible will be sizzled like a fajita. There's the thing. Now, because the details from Stormy were so salacious, I mean, even the judge had to say to her, honey, TMI, you know, I mean, there's kids watching her.

But now Trump's team is pushing for a mistrial. Oh, and by the way, mistrial is also Trump's drag name. Oh, look. There's mistrial. But, you know, Trump has been cited 10 times for contempt of court

because he, you know, can't keep his mouth shut. And anybody else who 10 times they would put you in jail? And I think he wants to go to jail because it would make him a martyr. He's practically begging the judge to put him in jail. There's a switch.

Lock me up. And I love this. Over on Fox News, Jesse Waters, have you seen this guy? Interesting guy. They keep finding him over there. He said if Trump does go to jail, he's going to work out a lot.

And he'll come out rip. You're right, I could just stop with that. But no, Jesse Waters said he's going to come out ripped with a jailbod. Oh gosh, Fox Election coverage, your number one source for gay fan fiction. And here's a development in the presidential race I didn't see forthcoming. Bobby Kennedy. Right. You just saw this.

revealed some medical news this week. He said he's fine to run, but full disclosure, a worm did eat his brain. I'm not making that up. No, I mean, not recent. There's like 15 years ago. And the worm is dead. The worm is dead, ladies and gentlemen,

no worries about the worm. I think this says everything about the presidential race. The 70-year-old man with a worm-eaten brain is the youth candidate. And Christy Knoem, says we've got to shoot him because he has worms. All right, we've got a great show. We have Frank Bruni and Douglas Murray are here.

But first up, he's a contributing writer at the Atlantic, author of the best-seller Fast Food Nation and producer of the documentary Food Inc. 2, which is available to stream now. Eric Schwasser, Eric. How are you? Big fan of Fast Food Nation, by the way. Thank you, God.

I love that book. How are you today? I'm good. Oh, yeah? Well, I want to ask you about, I wanted to have you here basically because we have a presidential election which seems to be a lot about eggs. Yeah. This seems to me what the whole thing is turning on people are very upset about.

Eggs and worms. Well, I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. Well, let's go to that first because it is on my mind. Not in my mind, I hope. But, I mean, the bird flu is now in the milk. How do you get a worm in your brain? Let's just go right there.

You know, you have to ask Bobby. I mean, I'm sorry that you couldn't talk to him about this when he was on your show. But maybe some bad sushi, maybe uncooked pork. But of all the... Right, it is food, that's how you do. Yeah, but of all the food-borne problems we've got in the United States, worm in the brain is not in the top 5,000. Right.

We have avian influenza being spread by cancer. cows. And scientists had no idea until a few weeks ago that this influenza could even be in cows at all. How do they get from the birds to the cows? Well, that's a very good question. There are wild birds that overfly dairies. There's all this intermixture of viruses that's going on. And what's very concerning about it is right now, the federal government is not allowed to go into these megadarys that have 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 cows, and test them for avian influenza. The federal government can't go on to these megadaries and test the workers, many of whom are undocumented and quite fearful of if they test positive what's going to happen to them.

You have big ag and the big dairy companies preventing the CDC from investigating what could be a life-threatening illness eventually to people. and it's a perfect example of how the public health is being threatened by private interests. Yeah, I mean, of all the industries that own the government, I'd have to say, you know,

pharmaceuticals vary high up, but nobody higher than the food. Well, the food companies spend more on lobbying than the defense industry. Right. Yeah, and it's, I feel like the big picture story from your book, your movie,

is that this system really works for nobody. It's not good for the land. Right. It's certainly not good for the animals. Right. it's not good for the workers who work in the fact, even in fast food. And the farm workers. And it's not good for the consumer.

It's not good for the person who eats this food. It's good for a handful of enormous corporations that have basically taken over our food supply in the last 40 years. That sounds crazy. That sounds conspiratorial. But when you go into a supermarket and you see thousands of different products, they're all being made by three or four different companies. And they hide behind these different brands. I mean, I just found out from this book that I read recently called Barron's by Austin Freerick, a great book that the biggest seller of coffee in the United States is a German company,

not Starbucks, but they sell it under all these different brands. So you think that there's choice. But it's really an illusion of choice. And I feel like the problem at bottom is that food is too delicious. That's why people don't care, is that we're seduced by the food. The Trojan horse is in our stomach. Right. So, I mean, we have these, I mean, you mentioned it.

Cigarettes are great, too, by the way. I used to smoke. I mean, I did too. I love them. But these food companies are carefully formulated, formulating these ultra-processed foods so that they taste really good and you want to eat them again and again and again. Okay, that's a word.

just came across recently from reading you, I've heard processed food. I've never heard ultra-processed. Is that something new, or is it just the word we hadn't heard before, and how is it different than just process? It is new. So a processed food would be something like canned corn. You know, they cook the corn, they add some salt

and some water. It's in the can. You open it up, you eat it. That's just fine. An ultra-processed? Yeah. I mean, frozen vegetables, canned vegetables. as long as they don't have all kinds of additives, that's healthy. I disagree vehemently. Well, vegetables have to be eaten fresh, or it's just shit, and corn is shit to begin with.

No, but ideally, yes, but in terms of harming your health, it's not going to hurt you. What's going to hurt you? If you look at the label, and there are all these chemical names that you would never have in your kitchen, that's an ultra-processed food. And what they're doing is they're creating flavor additives

at these factories, mainly in New Jersey, that you... Hey. Hey. No offense. There are some wonderful things that have come out of that state, but flavor additives may not be it.

Trust me, there are worse smells than the food factory. I'm a native. I can say that. And in New Jersey, you can tell where you are on the New Jersey turnpite by what it smells like.

Anyway, flavor additives, emulsifiers, all these like artificial sweetness that human beings have never consumed before. So we're basically guinea pigs for these chemical additives, and who knows what they're doing to our body, but now increasingly people are concerned, but they have all kinds of bad health effects.

They're giving it cancer. Obesity. And maybe all kinds of neurological problems too. Lots of problems. I mean, I think there's a direct link between that, the prevalence of cancer and the shit we eat. And the problem is when you eat these foods, I think, is that you're not getting nutrients.

You're getting calories. So your body still wants more food because it wants nutrients. It wants the good stuff. So you keep eating. You get fat. And here's where our Zempic comes in, which I know is the wonder drug,

and we all love it. I don't see it that way. It's an enabler. It's an enabler to keep eating shitty food. It's this miracle where you can keep, or maybe you don't eat as much, but you don't have to improve the diet. So I don't think it's going to make us healthier in the future.

It might make you thinner. I don't think you're still not getting the nutrients. Well, you know, we keep on creating problems with technology and then looking for a new technology to solve them. So this ultra-processed food is absolutely linked to obesity. So people become obese. And then the pharmaceutical companies come up with a drug to help with obesity. Now, I'm not an expert on Ozimic,

but I think that for people who are severely obese already, what's the choice? Gastric band surgery or terrible health problems or taking this drug? We don't know what the long-term implications of being on this drug is going to be, but the long-term implications of being obese are really bad. The people who probably shouldn't be injecting this drug

are people who are maybe a little too vain and are probably already slender and want to be even more slender. But for people who are really understanding, unhealthy because of their weight, it may be a good thing. But what we need to do is prevent children from becoming obese. And that means in schools we need to be serving real foods, not these ultra-processed foods. Right now, in the American diet, the typical American child is getting 60 to 70 percent of their calories from ultra-processed food. And that's just a recipe for

disaster. And also, there's no variety. You know, our diet needs, variety. You know, when we were nomadic, we had a great variety. This is in that great book Sapiens, he makes that great point that once we settle down and factory, well not factory farmed, but farmed originally and then factory farmed, we'd

like three things. We'd cows, pigs and chickens. So fucking sick of chickens. Right. And, you know... Poor chickens. You get him at breakfast, you get them at dinner, you get it... I mean, that's not good for the body. It's not good for the body. And as the co-producing of this film, and my friend Michael Paulin put it,

we should be eating real food, not so much, mainly plants. And, you know, the latest science is that you should be having 30 different types of plant in one week, because it's so much better to get your vitamins from real foods than to get them from supplements or additives, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So I remember at the very beginning of the COVID epidemic, four years ago. The very first

editorial I did here, well, I don't think it was here. It was in my backyard. That's right, because we were his tent home. But it was all about factory farming. It was about, look, because we thought at the time it came from the Wuhan wet market, and maybe it did. We don't know. It either came from the lab

or the market. It shouldn't be a political issue. Scientific issue, we still don't know. But certainly that didn't help. And my point was, as long as you keep torturing animals, we are going to be the ones to suffer. Even if you don't have compassion for animals. You're totally right. Okay, so what's the future here? Because I worry that the next one is coming, or it's worse. I mean, birds. The next one may be right now percolating in Texas,

where this avian influenza was discovered in cows accidentally by a veterinarian. And you should look up the Secretary of Agriculture in Texas, who's this far right-wing conservative, I don't mind that he's considered a conspiracy theorist who is basically blocking and trying to block the CDC from investigating this epidemic. Factory farms are a crime against nature. And I'm not a vegan. I'm not a vegetarian. These are sentient creatures that were treating like industrial commodities. And Mother Nature is going to get back at us for us.

Thank you. We needed to hear that message. I appreciate it. Great work, as always, Eric. Eric Schlosser. All right, let's meet our panel. Hi, guys. How are you too?

All right, he is a columnist for the New York Post and bestselling author of the book, The War on the West. Douglas Murray's back with us. How you doing? And he's a contributing writer at the New York Times

and author of the bestseller, The Age of Grievance. Frank Bruni, our returning champion. Okay. So let's start off talking about Israel and Gaza because we finally have someone here on the show who was there. That's not something you find a lot in the media these days.

It's very hard to get into Gaza, very hard to know what's going on there. So I just want to ask you, before we get to the politics of it all, because there's a lot of that this week. What does it look like there? Are people starving? And if they are, whose fault is that? First, I've been in Israel and Gaza for the last six months since the war began. I can't speak to whether anyone is starving.

It's a bad situation in Gaza because Hamas started a war. And, you know, Israel is stuck in this very, very strange position of having to supply food to the area controlled by its enemy. And are they? Yes, they are. I mean, food trucks going through all the time. But, I mean, of course the situation is terrible, because, you know, the situation could end at any point.

If Hamas did what they've been asked to do repeatedly, for six months, which is to give back the hostages. And now, you know, I mean, my view is that there's, I mean, I've seen the conflict up close, and I still believe that, I mean, first of all, you can't just put out 80% of a fire. You have to put out the whole thing. You can't destroy 80% of Hamas. You can't not get the leader who masterminded the seventh Sinai. And that's all in Rafa.

And the second thing is, you know, I don't think there's any law of war that says you can start a war. and then when you begin to lose it, you say, let's pretend we didn't start it. But that is always what Israel faces. Sure. I mean, it's very strange. A year before I was in Ukraine, I was with the Ukrainian armed forces when they're retaking land from the Russians. And nobody was saying, oh, hold on, don't win too much. Everyone was egging them on.

Every Western leader gets a shot of testosterone whenever they talk about the Ukrainian armed forces. And yet the Israelis never allowed to win. Yeah. Very strange. What do we attribute that to? Why, is that anti-Semitism, would you say? That, that, why they have a set of rules for them?

I mean, they truly are the chosen people. They're chosen to not win the war, I agree. Yeah, and, I mean, you know, for some reason, I think anti-Semitism is one of the reasons. Whenever Israel is involved in a conflict, the whole world goes bananas. And you can't even have a Eurovision song, without it becoming an Israel-Ghasa thing.

It's crazy. Everyone gets obsessed with this conflict. And I think one reason is, by the way, is because a lot of people, Democrats and Republicans, and people of all stripes have said for a generation, until the Palestinian-Israeli issue is solved, there won't be peace in the Middle East. As if you solve the Palestinian-Israeli issue

and then the economy of Yemen starts to boom. And then the Iranian mullahs give women rights. And the Saudis become really keen on the gays. No. It's an issue, for sure. So Biden says he's going to stop giving armaments now to Israel. What do you think about that? Is that appropriate?

I don't think it's going to please anybody, do you? No, of course not. I mean, he's obviously trying to, you know, he believes famously in the two-state solution, which is Minnesota and Michigan. And he's trying to please a few hundred thousand people. in America. I don't think he's going to please anyone, but the fact that he gave a speech on Tuesday saying that he would always defend the right of the Jewish people to defend themselves,

and later that day stopped arms shipments to Israel, suggests to me that, I mean, this is a problem. You can't, it's devastating if the end of this conflict comes about in another stalemate. If there's a stalemate at the end of this, Hamas are still in control in the Gaza, the war will happen again in two years time and again two years after that, and on and on for the rest of our lives. I don't disagree with any of that, but you're asking about the ire at Israel and the criticism of Israel. I think there's one other thing going on, which is right now there's this paradigm that people like to apply to every situation. If you have more power, you're probably in the wrong, and if you have less, you're probably in the right.

If you have more affluence, you're probably in the wrong, and if you have less, you're probably in the right. There are situations to which that paradigm applies. But the problem is we apply it indiscriminately, wantonly, regardless of the circumstances. circumstances and what has been so strange to me about all of this is almost so October 7th happens and from October 8th forward people are blaming Israel right there was a ceasefire in place right we're looking for one now there was one in place um Hamas crossed the border invaded and the savagery the brutality was incredible we have to have a conversation now about the magnitude of the retaliation about how many civilian casualties there are about whether this is indiscriminate but let us not

forget how this began. And so much of the conversation seems to wipe October 7th off the plate. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I mean, you know, remember about 10 years ago, the Boko Haram stole 300 schoolchildren in Nigeria? Bring back our girls. Everyone, bring back our girls, everywhere. Where has been the celebrity response, the Hollywood response, the decent people response, the any reasonable person response of bring back the Jewish children. Where is it? Well, it's not a Columbia.

No. Here's a bulletin from academia. Yes, Columbia in New York City announced Monday they're canceling their graduation. USC also canceled commencement here in Los Angeles. Emory University in Atlanta, changing the location of its ceremony. I don't know. I guess it's that dangerous.

I mean, what can I tell you? These kids are such drama queens. I mean, the student editors at the Columbia Law Review, they said they were the ones who agitated for canceling the finals. They said, because the violence of the police clearing, it wasn't violent, left them irrevocably shaken. Even if you were this fragile, would you say it out loud? I mean, you would?

Well, today I would. Today, I would because we live in a culture where if you can portray yourself as the victim and as the person who's been taken advantage of it, somehow has cultural and political currency. So they're just doing what they see politicians do every day. But it's not just... It's not just...

It's not just the fragility. It's the narcissism. I mean, who the hell is so badly brought up that they honestly believe that if they holler on a corner of a campus in America, the war cabinet in Israel is going to... stop. Like, maybe Benjamin Netanyahu, whatever you think of him, does not take his lead from a 19-year-old student whose parents have remorgeted to the house in order to send them

to college to become stupid. But they're not thinking strategically, they're not thinking tactically. They're not they like to holler, right? This is a moment where everyone likes to holler. And the message that people get from the way our Congress behaves, look at them, is that they who shout the loudest and use the most hyperbolic language and are the most provocative, win the news cycle. Say hello to Marjorie Taylor Green.

Yeah, I mean, of course. There's no, there's no bigger whiny little bitch than you know who. Those are your words. My words, and I said them a million times, and I'll repeat them a million times. He's the whiniest little bitch that ever was. She's an emblem of our time.

I'm talking about Trump, is who I referred. He's an emblem of our time. I mean, we shouldn't overestimate the power of politicians. I don't think that the average student looks to Congress for behavior, do they? I think they get permission. I don't think they look and say, that's what I want to be like, but I think a kind of culture is set, a kind of tone is set, in which confrontation is confused with conviction,

in which being provocative is confused with being bold and brave. I think that is a culture that our politicians absolutely feed. So let me read a quote from, just in case people think that, we're making this up or this isn't really prevalent, but it really is, and I thought of it because I've been reading your book, and your book is about grievance, the age of grievance. Okay, this is a 20-year-old UCLA student.

When you are a part of any oppressed group, I don't know what this person's background is, I assume she is a part of some group that she sees herself as oppressed, especially people that are experiencing direct state violence. Okay, kids call everything violence. So right there, you lose my... credibility with me, because you think everything is violence.

Like being part of the pan-African diaspora within the United States. That certainly happened in the United States. There are shameful history, which is built on enslavement and dehumanization and degradation of African peoples that does politicize you. I'm just asking, does this reflect America in 2024? Who raises a child to feel this way about the country right now? I keep saying, can we just live in the year we're living in? Not whitewash the past, but live in the present.

I mean, that someone feels, you're at UCLA. Who's oppressing you? The question isn't just who raises them to feel this way. It's who educates them to feel this way, right? If you look at curricula in a lot of secondary schools, probably the kind of secondary school that a lot of Ivy League students have been to, if you look at the curricula at a lot of elite schools, and I teach at one of them, there is the paradigm I spoke of before.

there are all of these buzzwords, and that's what produces this in part. What are the other buzzwords, you mean like? Oppressed or oppressed, colonizer, colonized, victim, victimizer, everything falls into this binary, and if you can claim the top victim status, then you win. Whereas, you know, in America, Britain and other countries in the West,

we used to celebrate heroism and achievement. I still like those, but there's a... And by the way, Also, I mean, I think we should also realize that some people are, you know, they used to be said in history of warfare that people fight the last war. You know, like in Iraq, you fight Vietnam, and in Vietnam, you fight Korea and so on. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of wars go wrong. I'd argue also that people are fighting the last culture war.

I mean, a lot of people would just love the clarity of 1968. And they honestly believe that they would be the heroes, whereas, of course, they'd just most likely be like everyone else and not particularly... Well, you've written recently about Alan Bloom, right? Yeah, of course. That's the late 80s, early 90s. You had a show called Politically Incorrect, right? If you go back, and I do in the book,

if you go back and you look at the late 80s in the early 90s, it's the same conversation we're having now, just different words. So I was watching a video of Robert Bork the other day from, I think, the early 1990s, and he was talking about radical egalitarianism. He was invang against it.

That's just wokeness with more syllables, right? So the more things change, the more they remain the same. Also, one of the very interesting things about that with Bork, Bloom, and others, is that they diagnosed, people diagnose this in the 1980s, as you know. And we've known the problems that are going on, this victimhood, culture, we've known this for 40 years now. And everyone's been great at diagnosing it, but we haven't solved it.

We haven't reversed it. It's just got worse. Well, I mean, we have an ex-president maybe to be a next president who's the victim-in-chief, right, whose entire political currency is making himself the world's biggest victim of the deep state, of those awful elites, of Democrats, of everyone, right? He won election because people saw themselves in him, and he said, he encouraged that, and he said, I am like, I'm a symbol of your victimization, vote for me, and it is your revenge against the

people who oppress you, and he said it more bluntly than ever this cycle. He said, I am your retribution. I think those are some of the most meaningful words we've heard in a long time. And that's why I think he wants to be sent to jail for a night. I don't know that he wants to use the jail toilet. I don't know. No, I mean, like, that's got to be in his head. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I did mention graduation.

Most of the colleges are still having graduation. But it's a little different this year. Now, every year we, as a custom on this show, we show the hats, you know, when kids graduate. They're some of the real ones that they have. Thanks, Mom and Dad, hire me. On to the next adventure. This year, they're a little different. Would you like to see some of that?

Okay. I thought you would. I thought you would. Um, like, hide your weed, mom and dad, I'm coming home. I'm Gen Z and I might possibly vote. Uh, love to my family, death to America. Um, not anti-Semitic. I just hate Jews. Oh, wow.

It's a very different year. Um, thanks for the checks, Mr. Gates. Uh, the job I haven't started yet already sucks. I quit. They said I couldn't do it, and that's why I cheated. Ready to cancel speakers in the real world. From the river to my parents' basement. And excited to see what I'll complain about next.

All right. So let's talk about... Okay, I know I talk about this a lot on this show, but I have to do it again. I did it last week. I tore Merrick Garland, a new asshole, because... I mean, the Democrats have had 40...

years to put Trump on trial and it is all just going away. They blew it at every term. Here's what's happened this week. Georgia. That one, okay, they're going to take up Trump's argument about Fannie Willis. Now, she's the prosecutor. She's having an affair with the guy she hired. I mean, it's not really relevant to the case, but they left an opening. And now that one's going to be delayed. The stolen documents one, that's never going to happen because that's a Trumpy judge down there. So, It's Stormy or Bust. I saw what you did there. It just comes out.

I'm not trying. If this one doesn't work, and she's a bad witness. Because, let me show you a little video. This is when I had Stormy on in 2018, and first I asked her why she had sex with Trump, listen to that, and then listen to what she says after that, and then we're going to talk about the trial,

because it's quite a variance of what she said to me in 2018. Why did you fuck Donald Trump? I have no idea. Okay, but you say it's not a Me Too case. It is not a Me Too case. I mean, I wasn't assaulted. I wasn't attacked or raped or coerced or blackmailed. They tried to shove me in the Me Too box to further their own agenda.

And first of all, I didn't want any part of that because it's not the truth, and I'm not a victim in that regard. That's not what she's saying now. She's talking about he was bigger and blocking the way. It's all the Me Too buzzwords. She said there was a power imbalance of power for sure. My hands were shaking so hard. She said she blacked out. Blacked out?

She's a porn star. I don't think sex... That doesn't mean she's been subjected to the likes of Donald Trump. I might black out too. Do you really think she blacked out? I mean, this is, a porn star is used to having sex with people. She does not know. That's the job.

It's kind of like Stormy Bob. Bob Stormy. Fuck. Action. And let's go. And we're losing the light. So I just think this is, I just think she's not a good witness. And this is.

No. No, yesterday wasn't a good day for her in court. And she wasn't a good witness. She has contradicted things she said in the past. And, you know, everyone who is hanging on the hope of Stormy Daniels being way to get Trump in prison is going to have another disappointment coming, I think. This feels to me as a kind of last chance, as you say, for the people who, it's clear to a lot of the country think, let's say, that there is just an aim to make sure that Donald Trump is not

on the ballot later this year, and it'll be done anyway. But, as you say, to end up with the Stormy Daniels case as the main hope is, if I was, you know, the main person wanting to get Trump in prison, that would not be the thing I would want to hang this on. I worry about another aspect of her testimony, which is the detail, the gratuitous detail. I keep having flashbacks to Lewinsky Clinton, right? And one of the reasons I think Bill Clinton was able to survive that whole Monaco-Lewinsky chapter was because Ken Starr and his Republican pursuers were so lascivious and overzealous. I mean, the details of the Star report are nothing.

I mean, what she said on the witness stand is nothing compared to that. I don't think... You know who wrote that? What? You know who wrote that? The Star Report? Brett Kavanaugh. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's the one who wrote all about...

That's Justice Kavanaugh to you. But all the stuff about sex with a Jew on Easter? You're right. They put in all those details on purpose, and I think your point is that it screwed them, right? Yes, and if you are not a total partisan at this point, And if you're that tiny band of people in the middle, I don't think they like to see people, even Donald Trump, gratuitously humiliated.

And so I don't think that is helping the cause of preventing another Trump. Yeah, the humiliation thing is really striking. I mean, there were details that the court went into this week, which they didn't need to. There was no reason why she had to go into these details about allegedly spanking him with a magazine. I do like the spanking.

In which case, Bill can give you a number. No, because the... I like the symbolism of it because in one version of the story, a disputed version, she's spanking him with a magazine that he's on the cover of. And that just feels to me like some perfect convergence of political commentary, psychotherapeutic comeuppance, and bad porn hub video, you know? But nevertheless, as with Clinton, there is that thing, that the abject humiliation becomes too much,

even apart from anyone who is a complete partisan already. And I think a lot of people will think that. You know, I mean, most people wouldn't want to have their sex lives gone into in this kind of detail, you know. It's interesting. I'm out plugging a book. I probably shouldn't do it tonight, but I will. It's film.

What this comedian said will shock you, and it's out May 21st. We've been pre-order it now. But, no, but it is true. Now that I'm doing interviews with it, the big question that people are asking me, every interview asked the same question, which is like, you know, you make fun of the left a lot more than you used to. Yes, I do, because they're goofier and more obnoxious than they used to be.

It doesn't mean I've turned into a Republican, I haven't changed on that at all. They also just became weirder. They're still not the threat the Republicans are, but I do both. And the question I get from everybody is, if you really don't want Trump elected, and I really don't, then why don't you just shut up about Joe Biden and just shut up about what's wrong with the left? And it's so interesting. This very week, I noticed, I guess he's not your boss anymore, right? You're at the Times.

I see you in the Times often, but you're not officially with the paper. I'm kind of half in, half out. Oh. I'm just going with the evening's metaphors. I see. So I see the head of the New York Times, the executive editor, Joe Kahn, was asked almost to the same question. This guy, Dan Pfeiffer, used to work for Obama.

He was complaining. He said, the Times does not. see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power. He was complaining that they don't do it. And Mr. Khan said, I don't even know how that would work. We become an instrument for the Biden campaign and put out a stream of stuff that's very, very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side, which made me laugh because I feel like that is what the Times actually does,

and I didn't even want the other side to come out. But here's Mr. Conn what he said. he said, there are people who want to elect Donald Trump as president. It's not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It's the job of Biden and the people around him. So I applaud this. I think that is the right. But I wanted to get you guys on this. If you really, I mean, it is a reasonable question. If you really don't want Trump to be elected, should you just be quiet about the other side's flaws? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. If you ignore and you sugarcoat Joe Biden's shortcomings, then when you turn your attention to Donald Trump's wretchedness, you've surrendered

all credibility. We don't have a surfeit of credibility to work with right now. It's our job. It's our job to cover both of these candidates honestly. And I honestly believe that if we do that, the one who will end up in the less flattering light is one Donald Trump. And it's our job to be a part of democracy. If you believe in democracy, you give voters a full menu of information. You don't feed them baby bird style just what you think they can tolerate, right, or what you want them to eat. And then you let them make the decision. That's called the democracy. And we've spent the last years since 2016, when Trump was elected, we've been saying we are the servants of truth, we are the guardians of truth. We can't say, but there's an asterisk if we think

telling you the truth might have an election turn out differently from what we want. But I mean, we already know that the media does this. I mean, the media, everyone in the media seems to think that we're not completely transparent to the public. We are. The media as a whole, the public can see right through it. The public knew exactly what most of the media. the media were doing with Hunter Biden in the 2016 election. They knew that 2020 election, sorry. They knew that there was an attempt to suppress the story, and then afterwards we discovered, sure,

there was an attempt to suppress the story. Why? Because a large amount of the media just wanted to get their guy in. I can't understand this. I have to say, I don't know about the job of a comedian, but a job of a journalist, in relation to politicians, is famously what the position of a dog should be to a lamppost. You're meant to piss on them.

You are... You're not meant to be... The media is not meant to be... Journalists are not meant to be the amen chorus of any political party, any politician. We're just meant to report the truth as we see it. Of course, it's editorializing. But this idea that it's like a team sport, if you want a team sport, go into politics. Don't be in journalism and the media.

But here's the thing we can't do. We need to be honest about them both. We need not to ignore and sugarcoat Biden shortcomings. But we also can't do this. Here's one bad story about Trump. here's one bad story about Biden. We can't enforce this mathematical equivalence, right? You've got one candidate who has delusions or aspirations

to a quasi-fascist state. You've got another who's going to mix up the name of world leaders and need a midday nap. It's not any, me, me, my own. No, it's no. And the problem... The problem with that is that it could easily be done by a Trump supporter the other way around, as you know.

And the problem in this country now, as I see it, What's the other word? If 50% of the population vote one way, 50% vote another, and occasionally you get this sort of small percentage you swing, I would have thought you'd least have to take the reasons why people support Trump seriously and assume that they're sort of voting for him in spite of what they know about him.

And I think that there's this very, very strange thing that's happened in this country. It's worse than any other democracy I know, which is that you have now a situation where people don't have different opinions. They have different facts. and so everything that you can say from 2016 if you're a Democrat and from 2020 or if you're a Republican or from this year on

is just a totally different set of facts, a totally different version of the history. My worry is that you can't... That's called the Internet and Social Media. Yeah, that's definitely made it worse, of course. I'll make take Frank side on this for a minute by... I'll just by quoting Mr. Tim Scott. He was running for president on the Republican side. He didn't make it.

Now he was asked this week, last week, Would he accept the 2024 election results? He goes around a little bit, and then he says, at the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump. That sounds a lot like, no, I will not accept any results, except unless our side wins, it's a fake election. So I think that is a very fundamental difference.

Look, I agree, but I'm not making this as a partisan on this point. I just say that a lot of Republican voters will just subsisting, that lots of Democrats didn't accept the Trump election. A lot of people in this country did Russia, Russia, Russia, and the Russia thing turned out not to, they relied on it. My God, did they rely on it?

Night after night. There was... Because there was giant collusion with Russia. You are making somewhat of a good point, but you cannot... Too kind. You cannot... No, no, no. You cannot... No, but in all honesty, you cannot compare saying Russia meddled, Russia meddled,

which, by the way, Russia did, with January 6th. You can't compare it. No, but you can see it. You can see it. Donald Trump, Donald Trump launched a scheme. Fake electors at federal

to steal the election. That is not the same as Democrats saying we think Russia's made this. But it's on a continuum. If in 2016, there are people who say that is not our president, you get it first from Hillary Clinton, then you get a lot of other people like Nancy Pelosi,

not small figures. If they do that for four years and the Republicans get on, the game, then what happens is exactly what we have now, which is people in this country now only think the election is won when it's their side. This always happens. I have to cut it short just when it's getting hot. Anyway, thank you guys, but I got to go to New World. Okay. New Rule, the celebrities who wear these ridiculous outfits to the Met Gala have to answer the question, how do you go to the bathroom? Or get a drink, or dance, or do anything

one typically does at a gala? And then there's the embarrassment when you have to tell your mother, I was out all night pulling a train. You know, someone has to ask the man who's in the news because he raised a four-month-old lion and plays with it in his yard. You know how this ends, right? Yes, congratulations, my friend. You're going to be in the news again.

One more time. And like everyone who imagines they can make a pet out of an apex predator, your last words will be, don't worry, he's just playing. New role between Christy Noam saying she shot her dog and RFK saying he found a dead worm in his brain. Politicians need to go back to lying.

What is it? Too much information. It's not helping your chances. When I hear a guy found a dead worm in his brain, it makes me think just one thing. You can stop asking me to try sushi. I'm sure it's

delicious, but I think the cavemen were on to something when they started cooking with fire. New Rule, now that the Boy Scouts of America is changing its name to scouting America, someone has to tell them, that still sounds kind of creepy. Maybe even more so.

We're scouting America for young boys. Yeah, that doesn't sound good either. New Role, don't be surprised, these $800 designer jeans with a stain that looks like you pissed your pants are... are sold out.

Hey, the kids love streaming. And young voters are the key to this election. And these pants say, I love Joe Biden so much, I want to dress just like him. Say, we're living up to our credentials. And finally, new rule, now that the campus protesters

are finally packing up their tents and de-lousing their hair, it's time for the media to admit that they blew the whole thing way out of proportion, because, as always with media these days, they don't cover what's most important, just what's most fun to watch.

There are 15.2 million college students in the U.S., and 2,300 have been arrested. That's one-sixie-seventh of 1%. And half of the ones in New York weren't even students. But we were given the false impression that these protesters are the voice of their generation, having found a cause for which they were willing to go to the tents and to the barricades.

Oh, please, these kids are more violent when their team wins a championship. A Harvard youth poll proved it. They asked people 18 to 29 what issues mattered most to them, and out of 16 choices, Palestine, came in 15. The vast majority just wanted to do what they went to college for in the first place,

to experiment with being a lesbian. But when these kids chant, the whole world is watching, they're right. But only because you assholes with the cameras won't show anything else. Isn't there a bear in a swimming pool somewhere you should be covering? So I thought as a public service, since it's so hard to find reliable news these days, tonight,

I would provide a few rules of thumb for trying to follow the news in our modern age. Starting with, if the headlines in your preferred news outlet routinely feature words like shreds, destroys, pummels, bashes, your outlet is a partisan piece of shit. Either that or you're reading a Batman comic. Ditto with obliterates, roasts, annihilates, and owns. You're supposed to be a source for information, not Nikki Glazer at the Tom Brady roast. Oh, she was good.

Two, any news source that quotes the Internet or writes Twitter says or a bunch of hacks too lazy to do real journalism. You can pretend you wrote a piece on the zeitgeist, but what you really did was look on your phone and quote the three angriest people with the most time on their hands. Three, if your news outlet

consistently reduces everything that happens in the world to who the president of America is, get rid of it. It's just thoughtless, reflexive team politics. Trust me, no one lighting a tire fire in Haiti is thinking, I wouldn't have done this under Trump, but given the weakness of the Biden administration, why not?

Every problem in the world isn't caused by the president. When that train derailed in East Palestine, it wasn't because Trump deregulated the brakes. And the container ship didn't hit the bridge because of Biden's woke DEI agenda. These aren't news stories. Their storylines pumped into your bubble. Four, always be aware that once the news became a profit division

of media companies, they stopped being in the news business and are now in the audience-stroking business. The goal is no longer to inform opinions. It's to reinforce them. Walter Kronkite used to say, that's the way it is. Now it's, that's our story and we're sticking to it. Narrative first, whole story never. On Fox, a Venezuelan migrant is always stabbing a white lady, and on NPR, where they stop bashing the rich long enough only to beg for money, Jamaica is a paradise and Nebraska is a no-go-zone.

News Nation reported this year that the U.S. was on track for nearly a 300% increase in measles cases. 300%. Wow, that sounds like it could be millions. It was 35. Because they just want to manipulate you into clicking. Look, I have 10 fingers.

You want to see me suddenly have 80% less? Okay. Five, never trust the initial reports. The media cares way more about being first than being right. They love a scoop, but it's a scoop of shit because it always turns out to be wrong. This goes way back to, remember Columbine? Remember that?

The first school shooting where it was widely reported that the shooters were members of a trench coat mafia. They weren't. That they were being bullied, not true. And they targeted jocks. No evidence of that. So they got everything right except for all of it. You know, you have to care about the truth.

The media doesn't care about. because they know you don't care, but you just want to hear your side. So at some point you need to take a step back, look around, and be really honest. Are you actually as fucked as your news feed tells you you are? Are you miserable? Some people are, and we should help them.

Are you destitute? Some people are, and we should help them. But most people who take this subway get to work alive. Most don't fall out of a plane with a missing door. Odds are you won't actually are you actually catch bird flu during a school shooting or be living on the street because a squatter snatched your house. Be honest.

Are you really that sad about the present, sorry about the past, and scared shitless about the future? People come up to me a lot these days, and they say, Bill, what are we going to do if he wins? They didn't even ever have to say who. I know who they mean. The guy who always looks like he's jerking off two guys when he dances. Fan favorite.

Well, you know what? I don't know what we'll do if he wins, but my guess is we'll keep on living. Trump could absolutely blow up the world on day one of term two. He's a dangerous, erratic, insane, awful person, and I'd love to help him get not elected. But he didn't actually start World War III last time,

or nuke a hurricane, or trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. Sure, the sequel is usually worse, but until he does, I'm going to live my life. and not the one the media wants me to live, hating half the country and shitting my pants 24-7. Is the sky really falling? I don't know. Maybe. And maybe it's just the door from a Boeing airplane.

All right. That's our show. I'll be at the orphan in Minneapolis, July 13th, the Riverside in Milwaukee on the 14th, and the MGM Music Hall in Boston, July 26. I want to thank Douglas, very Frank Rooney, and Eric Schlosser. Now go watch overtime on YouTube. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Catch all new episodes of real time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10

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