Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #696: Stanley McChrystal, Scott Jennings, Peter Hamby

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

Bill’s guests are Stanley McChrystal, Scott Jennings, Peter Hamby (Originally aired 5/16/25) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Real Time with Bill Maher. So much news. People, right back at you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, please. But there is so much news to get to a big Supreme Court ruling just happened. We're going to talk about on the panel.

Breaking news. Always very exciting when that happens on a Friday. And, of course, the president's big trip, you know, he was in the Middle East this week. A lot of stuff happened. He was in Saudi Arabia. Boy, they are. a bromance going on over there.

Well, they do. I mean, bromance diplomacy, I call it. But, you know, Trump has a unique bond with the Saudis. They both reshaped the Manhattan skyline. And that was the first joke of the night. I mean, can you imagine where

this shit's going? Okay. No, but I'm telling you, Trump loves these rich Arab guys. He said to Crown Crown Prince MBS over there and said, I like you too much. He did. And now Putin isn't returning his text.

But no, they... They love him over there. They had... Camels, they had... Pareda. Teslas, they had horses. They had dancing girls. They had a purple carpet.

I guess it's like a platinum gold card. You know? It's like purple, not even red. And they also listen to this. they set up a mobile McDonald's there. A little different of them than McDonald's. The happy meal toy is a little bon saw. Well, and then, I love this.

As Trump is leaving Saudi Arabia, shakes hands with MBS, and then they play YMCA in a country where you could get the death penalty for being gay. I know they say village people, that's not a gay anthem, but people think it is. So to put that, play that while he's in Saudi Arabia, but, you know, that's Trump. And then it was on to Rome to meet the new pope to the tune of wet-ass pussy. So, I'm kidding.

He didn't go to Rome. Then it was on to the country of Qatar. Oh, yeah, where he got a night. You know, when you travel, you like to leave with a souvenir, right? So we got a $400 million plane that they gave him, gave him a $400 million.

plane, which he accepted now. This has to be the ultimate, if Obama did it, I think, you know, because if Obama did it, Fox News would be endlessly calling it a la force one. So I think I will call it that a la force one. But it's mood anyway, because it's not

going to be ready to be that if it was going to be Air Force One, so it would have to be private, which then it would be illegal. But, you know, it doesn't matter. Trump says he will not be using it when he leaves office, and people don't believe that. Not the using it part, the leaving office part. But, okay, so Trump now has four planes. He's got the two Air Force ones that the government provides.

Then he's got his own plane. Now he's got this one. Four planes. Yet everybody else, still only three dollars and ten pencils. I mean, it's... But I thought this was an interesting sign of the Times today. I saw in the paper there's a man named Glenn Rogers in Florida. They put him to death.

He's a serial killer. Like all serial killers, he's a white man from Ohio. But listen to this. His last words before the shit went in the arm were, President Trump, keep making America great. And you know, Trump, he said, What am I supposed to not take the compliment? But of course, what everybody is really talking and gossip about is I'm sure you know,

the rapper and mogul Sean Combs. The trial is going on in New York, and oh my God, his ex-Cassie testified this week, and according to her testimony, this shit is even sicker than we thought. I mean, he really puts the pee and pee-diddy. Well, again, according to her testimony, she says, he brought in other men to have rough sex with her, including urinating on her. I mean, say what you want about R. Kelly.

He did his own urinating. I don't know about you. I just don't get these freaky people. I mean, I'm so glad I'm not freaky like that. I mean, I don't get this being so jaded. Because Puffy, he wasn't even participating. He wouldn't participate. He would just sit there and tell his girlfriend

and hired prostitutes what to do. But then again, he was always. always a better producer than performer. But, okay. But it may not be so bad for him after all, Puff Daddy, because Shug Knight said this week, it's going to be okay because Trump is probably going to pardon him. Well, I don't know, maybe.

You know, Ditty's a terrible guy, but he does have a lot of oil. Scott Jennings, the first up. Oh, my gosh. He is a retired four-star Army General. How about that for a train? transition and bestselling author of Uncharactered choices that Define a Life. Stanley McChrystal

General Sir? How are you? It's a pleasure. Thank you for your service. I mean, not sincerely. Well, thank you for being here. I'm sorry you had to see that monologue. You're such a serious guy.

I mean, you ran our war in Afghanistan. I mean, you were ahead of the Joint Special Operations Command. which is our elite commandos, when there's something terrorist going on. What do you think of the puff ditty trial? No, I'm sorry. No, I want to know,

because all we've been hearing about lately is this Pentagon is kind of in a meltdown. Pete Higgs-eth from Fox News took over, and twice now he's been caught talking on a signal, which is an app, which is not safe, according to the book.

And people in the Pentagon, I've read, are upset. about this. I've even read the word meltdown. You must know people still in the building. What's going on inside the Pentagon? Well, thanks for asking. I think people are bothered by a lack of seriousness. And I'll say on a couple levels. If you look at Signal Gate, we'll call it, that was a bit amateurish. That was a mistake. And I can, I think people can say that's sort of people figuring out how to do their job. Twice? It happened twice.

But then after the fact, they went in front of media and testimony, and they said that the information wasn't classified. And it was. How could it not be? It was about attacking another country. That's right. But the real problem is they knew it was, and they want us to believe them. And that's a real issue there. If you think of the Pentagon in general, we've got to defend the nation.

And that's very, very serious business. It's expensive. It's across the world. And it requires every capability America can marshal. And now we are locked in this argument about DEI. And in reality, when I commanded the counterterrorist forces, it was the ultimate meritocracy. I mean, you see the movies, and you see the bearded commander with big shoulders, Nami Nuckles. And I was part of that.

And now people can tell they're not all like that. I would like to say I was bigger then, but the reality is it's a team. And that team that does it is communicators and logisticians, intelligence professionals, and it's people of every age, of every sex, of every gender. If someone is transgender, no one cares. They want to get the job done right. And so we sometimes make it two-dimensional in the idea that,

you've got to be a certain profile to be a warrior. And I just have a different view of the military than Secretary Hague says that does in that regard. I think we really are about what best defends us. And I think what best offends us is everybody. But I must say, this is exactly why these guys wanted to take over. Because they think, I mean, first of all, I do find it hard to believe that nobody in the military

has a problem with trans people in the military. Is that what you're saying? No, I certainly would never speak for everybody in the military. I'm sure some do. But the reality is... I mean, it's the same thing as what goes on in women's locker rooms. There are some places people just don't want a penis. I mean, there are...

I don't trust a penis no matter who has it. Okay, it's just not a trustworthy organ. But this is why they want. They say that Pete Higgs says, we have to restore the warrior ethos. and that somehow this is in conflict with wokeness. So you don't see that as a problem at all. When you were there, there was nothing that you would describe as too woke. Well, there are always superficial things that even at the time caused me to roll my eyes a bit.

But the reality is it was a great service member on TV the other day who said, we're too strong to participate in sports, and yet we are not strong enough to be in the military. And that's the basic contradiction here. I think anyone who has the desire to serve their nation to put their life on the line, to bring their talents, I've just never seen, I never heard a discussion about transgender when I was in. In fact, there was a big argument about women in combat,

and there was a certain percentage of the force that was against it. And the thing that became kind of funny about it is they were still arguing about it 10 years after women were already in combat and doing very well. And so that had changed. The reality had changed. And most of the people who were actually doing the military's business are very practical people. And I think that's still the case.

And do you think, I mean, your book is about character, and the phrase that struck out to me is, Embrace the Suck that you talk about, which is, I guess you didn't coin that, but that's what they say in the military, which means things get rough out there, and you've got to embrace it. Does the military you feel still have that character?

I think they do. But the suck may be different. If we think of every soldier carrying a huge rucksack and walking 30 or 40 miles with it, that was never the reality. That was always a subset of the force. There were always people that did this other range of jobs. And some of them work 18 hours a day,

some of them work seven days a week. I mean, there are tremendous things. I remember mechanics in the cold when I was a mechanized unit. It would be really cold, and they'd take their gloves off, and they would grab a wrench, and they would be trying to tighten or loosen a bolt, and it would slip off, and they would bark their knuckles, and you just, you cringed when you watched that, but they didn't complain. And so everybody had a different way of contributing,

and kind of it all sucks at times. But the reality is it's willing to say that sucking is part of it. Whatever my particular participation is isn't going to be something I like every minute of every day. And the future of warfare isn't any of that anyway, is it? I mean, now we have guys who sit in an air-conditioned building in Las Vegas and operate a drone that it drops missiles half a world away. we're not going to have fighter pilots in the future.

Even Elon Musk said that, although they did not go through with their plan to cut the Pentagon budget. They should have. Should they not have? The Pentagon budget is an interesting one, and I'll just say that it's not a litmus test for patriotism. A bigger budget doesn't mean you're more patriotic.

We should spend as much on defense as we need to. It's always going to be expensive for America because we try to be prepared to fight around the world. Many of our allies or even our opponents have a fairly narrow geographical area and mission set. So they focus on that and they can be more economical on that. We try to be able to do a wide range of things, and that's part of America's role in the world. So it's going to be expensive. Could we cut the defense budget? I think we could spend the money better. I think defense acquisition is almost remarkably out of date the way we do it. And I think most of the people who

participate in that system, understand that. But it was going to take major reform. If you want a Secretary of Defense to do something that I would be truly excited about, instead of focusing on DEI, they would come in and they say, we're going to reform defense acquisition in a brutally efficient way and try to produce something different. So one of the big military stories recently was that not one, but two airplanes fell off an aircraft carrier. I mean, Senate the kids talk about falling off. It means you're not doing as well as you used to do, but these planes really fell off.

Yeah. Why? Well, I don't know. I wasn't there, but let me paint a picture of a nuclear aircraft carrier for everybody. It's about 5,000 young Americans, average age, like 18 years old. You wouldn't lend your car to them.

But we've given them a nuclear aircraft carrier, and they do a splendid job. They wear different colors, sweatshirts. They launch and recover aircraft. And they just do the nation's bidding day after, day after day. Do people make mistakes? They do. It's probably amazing that it doesn't happen more often.

Exactly. And landing a plane on the aircraft carrier? I've seen enough movies to know what a bitch that is. It's insanity. It's insanity, right? At night or something, you have this little matchbook cover that you're trying to hit from coming down at crazy speed. and then you have to stop on a dime.

It's kind of amazing that they pull off what they do on a regular basis. And they do it day after day after day, year after year. And so that's... As you did, and we thank you. People say thank you for your service, like it's a thing.

But when I say it, I mean it, I think most people do. Thank you, General. I appreciate you doing. Thank you. General McChrystal. All right, good luck at the book. All right, let's meet our panel. Hey, guys. How you doing?

All right. He hosts Good Luck America on Snapchat and is a founding partner at Puck News. Peter Hamby back with this, Peter. And he's on the other network. I'm also on CNN. He's a senior political contributor whose forthcoming book, A Revolution of Common Sense, is available for pre-order on Amazon. I used to call him Lonely Scott Jennings, but he has some help now. Scott Jennings. How are you? Okay.

Well, I'm always excited when there's breaking news. before we come on the end. And this is Friday at about 4 o'clock here in Los Angeles. And the Supreme Court today just said they are denying 7 to 2. The Trump administration's request to swiftly resume deportations of Venezuelan nationals. If you've been following this story, Trump used something from 1798 called the Alien's Enemies Act. It depended on you believing that we were actually under invasion, that this was a war. because there are gangs, there are gangs from Central American,

South American countries here in this country, whether this was a invasion, by any reasonable reading of that word, a lot of people question this, and interesting, we could talk about the Supreme Court, not always backing them up, as people thought, but let's just get to this right away. What do you think about this ruling by the Supreme Court?

Will this be important? Yeah, I mean, I think the court here is standing up for due process. Donald Trump doesn't like it. It's not over. They're just sending this back to a lower court to make a decision as to whether these Venezuelans in Texas

can be deported and sent to this megaprison in El Salvador. Most... The interesting thing about Donald Trump saying, I think he posted on true social, the courts are trying to stop us from fighting this invasion of illegal alien criminals or whatever language he used.

88% of Americans, I think, according to Pew, think that Donald Trump should abide by whatever the Supreme Court says. The court's not popular, generally. But as the president is, you know, pushing back against the courts, expanding executive power and the courts are pushing back on him, I mean, 78, I think 80% of Republicans

in the same poll agree that the Supreme Court is the final word. But again, like, we'll see what happens. This is a procedural decision. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a good thing. thing that most people believe that because Donald Trump also believes that. He's repeatedly said that they'll abide by what the Supreme Court decisions are, but that's not going to stop them from pulling all the most creative levers they can think of to repel what I think they rightfully believe has been an invasion. It's not just these gangs. It's illegal immigration in general,

and the last administration allowed it to happen. They got elected largely on a mandate to correct it, so they're trying creative things. Maybe they're stretching the boundaries of what a 1798 law was intended for. But most Americans know it was a crisis. Most Americans know the previous administration caused it, and most people voted for Donald Trump largely because they thought he would do what was necessary to fix it. Now, if the court doesn't agree with him,

I'm sure they'll go back to the drawing board on it. But I think he's got a lot of political leash to pull as many levers as he can. The curious dynamic that's going on, I think, is that they're trying to have it both ways, claiming there's an invasion, pushing the courts. What the Trump White House is doing, using all the levers of the federal government,

is working. I mean, Joe Biden's policies at the border were a disaster. Democrats need to admit that. At February 2023, I think, there were 200, a quarter million apprehensions at the border. In March of this year, there were 7,000. So, like, fentanyl deaths are down in this country. Crime, violent crime is coming down. So, like, it's working.

They're arresting and deporting 65,000 people so far. So, like, the invasion is being stopped. but Trump is still saying we need the courts to push back the invasion. But it's the people who already are here. Take the Abrago-Garcia character that we sent back to El Salvador. He has been in the country or was in the country for 14 years. He came in

2011 and it's 2025. And there's plenty of evidence that he was a pretty bad dude. And most people are looking at this saying, how did he come in and stay here for this long? Why shouldn't we be trying to pull levers to get people like that out of the country? So your view is that bad dudes could be sent to a

foreign prison? That In the country where they are a resident or a citizen? Sure. Okay, but that's not what the Constitution says. I mean, our friend Byron Donald's, who has been on the show before this week, said, due process is reserved for American citizens. But that is not what the Constitution says. I mean, maybe it should, but that's not what we're talking about.

We're saying, what does it say? I mean, if you were the founding fathers and you were writing the Fifth Amendment or the 14th Amendment, because both of them used the word person. They knew the difference between the word person and the word citizen that says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. That's the Fifth Amendment. The 14th says no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, property without due process. So isn't it clear? I mean, you talk about creative means, but creative can just kind of morph right into, we're just going to do whatever I want.

And I don't think, as you said, those polling numbers, even among Republicans, I don't think they want to live in a country where a guy just goes, you know, you're a bad dude. You go to torture chamber. Well, that's not the country they live in. They live in a country where this guy had been to immigration court repeatedly. But the Venezuelans they're talking about in this case, the Supreme Court's votes on today, Trump wants to send them to El Salvador.

They're not from El Salvador. I mean, Trump was asked, do you have a duty to uphold the Constitution? And his answer was, I don't know. not a lawyer. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm just asking. But in the same breath, he said, on this case, we have the best lawyers, and we're going to abide by what the Supreme Court said. I mean, that was what his full statement was. Look, these people, these gang members are not coming here to be productive Americans. They are coming here to rape, pillage, murder, steal, and wreak havoc on communities. The president was elected to fix it.

I believe in when he says he's going to abide by Supreme Court decisions, but I don't think most people begrudge him creative ideas when it comes to getting them out when they've been allowed to stay here for so long. They don't begrudge him a lot of ideas. I don't even begrudge him a lot of ideas like that. I don't want gangs in this country either. Or, you know, was there bloat in the government? Or USA aid, maybe there was some corruption. It's the way he does it. It's this, it's the wrecking ball nature. You know. So when I hear people say, when I hear people say it's the way he does it, what I hear is, well, I don't like the way he does

and I would prefer he not do anything at all. Let's just kick the can down the road. That's what everybody else does. He didn't get elected to kick the can. Really, there's no middle ground between doing nothing and doing it the right, please. What's the right way? Well, I don't know.

Like, if you were going to demolish a building, wouldn't you go in there and take out the valuable stuff first as opposed to just knocking the fucking building down? How many of the, I don't know. How many of the game members would you consider to be valuable? I mean, the problem is... I'm talking about Doge. Oh, Doge?

Yeah, that kind of thing. The problem is that, again, speaking in polls, most Americans agree violent criminals who are here illegally undocumented should be gone. It's all the other people who get caught up in the dragnet who might not be criminals or, I mean, you've talked on this show a lot about the protesters at Columbia. Like, there might be a ton of bozos who were, you know, in those protests. But the people who were arrested at Tufts and at Columbia and sent to an immigration holding facility in Louisiana,

they haven't been charged with a crime. They were just like exercising their free speech rights. All right, let's move. I want, before we run out of time, I want to get to the trip to the Middle East. Because Trump, Trump, if anything, he is a disruptor, you've got to give him that. Because he has mixed up the right and the left this week

as I haven't seen in a long time. I see lots of people on the right, criticizing him for taking the plane and for being. cozy with guitar. I see lots of people, Democrats, centrists, people who you don't usually see saying nice things about Trump. Let me read, Fareed Zakaria, Trump reminded us that sometimes his willingness to take risks and think outside the box can shake up old tired ways. He could bring a new level of peace and stability to the Middle East. This is Gene Jeanne. She's the Democratic

Senator of New Hampshire. She's down with it. Sarah Jacobs. She's a congressman. She's a congressman out here in California. Here's Rob Malley. He's in the Biden administration. I wish I could work for an administration that could have moved that quickly. It's hard not to be summously terrified, he says, by the things Trump does.

Also awed by his willingness to brazenly shatter so many harmful taboos. Ben Rhodes, that's Pod saves America. It doesn't get more left than that. It's so clearly the right decision. He's talking about recognizing Syria. So it's so funny, you know, They want to separate somehow Trump's transactional, which is preposterous,

some of this transactional bribery stuff that goes on with his diplomacy. You can't. That's who he is. That's how he sees the world. You know it the first time they re-elected him. It's never going to change. It's a bromance diplomacy. The way he talks about these, he's a handsome guy.

I don't know what's going on. The question is, is the transaction? part, is it possible that in the future we will say, oh, well, it was worth it because we got peace in the Middle East? I don't know. This is the big question of this week, and you mentioned Ben Rhodes, him and Tommy Vitor on POD Save

the World, did say they like some of the things that he did. He sidelined Netanyahu from these conversations. He got rid of sanctions against Syria, and both of them said on POD Save the World, I wish Biden had done that, and he did. And there's a thing that Scott and I both know from D.C.

It's called the blob. The foreign policy blob, the State Department lifers, the think tank people who think and still think that the post-war, post-war War II order, is still a thing and you still needs to do this and that. Biden came out of that world. If we have a, if we remove a Russian and Iranian proxy in Syria, you know, that's backed now theoretically by a U.S. ally, we can always put sanctions back up. Like, that's a good thing. If we're getting hostages out of Gaza, that's a good thing.

I don't think Trump cares that much about the Palestinians. But there are lots of possible, very good outcomes here. And I was amazed by reading some of these quotes from Biden State Department people who were like, man, I wish we could have done this stuff. I mean, yeah, they're saying that because they wish their own president had been awake long enough to do anything like this. I mean, this is the problem. People respond to leadership. People respond to leadership. The president is functional and capable of going to another country and saying, I represent the United States.

Let's wheel and deal here. And on Qatar, I would just point out all the people who are upset about this plane. We're already dealing with these people. We get the big military base there. We saw them a lot of military equipment. We have already crossed the threshold of deciding we have to deal with Qatar, even though they have clearly done things that we don't like. And so the idea that we're going to be mad about having a relationship with them now.

Well, that is the new, well, there is a Trump doctrine now. You know, and if people have been followed in the past our history, we have doctrines. The Monroe doctrine, like in the 19th century, was saying, anything that happens in the Western Hemisphere or in the Caribbean, That's our business, and we will fuck with you. Then there was the Bush doctrine. The Bush doctrine was like, if you harbor terrorists, we will treat you like a terrorist yourself.

Now we have the Trump doctrine, which is, I think, as much of a departure as any doctrine a president has ever promulgated. Because what he is saying is, and I'll give you some of the quotes, is in the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built. This is his speech in Riyadh. interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand. Now, I've got to say, this is something people on the left said about Vietnam, societies. We did not even understand. We said it about Iraq. What are we doing here?

But Trump is basically saying, we don't give a shit about what your morality is. And again, it's a hard one for people on the left to argue with because they're the ones who say America is so evil. So his doctrine is basically you do you. We all love money. We all love money, and we're not going to lecture you, or heck do you, anymore, about your morals. You want to cut off somebody's head, a reporter's head with a bone saw? You know, we all have our peccadilloes.

That's his doctrine. I talked to someone in the Trump administration yesterday about all of this, and they said literally what you just said. They said, quote, this person, Trump isn't going over there to lecture. He's going over there to do deals. This person described it fully as realism. He's transactional.

That's who he is. And again, maybe the American people will decide this. The international community will decide this. The blob might think about this. Like, do we care about abandoning the traditional, like, morality of the United States exporting our values overseas in service of good outcomes? It's a very interesting question. It's a very reasonable question because the other way didn't really work.

I mean, planting democracy in the Middle East was really, I mean, they gave a lot of of reasons why we went into Iraq, but that was really what, they couldn't say it all the time, but Thomas Friedman would say it for them. We need to plant a democracy in the heart of the Arab world, and it didn't work, because, you know what, you got to get rid of the religion, and they, and they're not, that's not going to happen in our lifetimes before you can get to democracy. They don't care about the same things. Biden would not talk to MBS after he cut off the guy's head, and then six months later, when we needed Saudi Arabia, he went over there and fist bumped him. Something about the Republican doctrine that is fascinating to me.

I've been in the party for 25 years working in it. We've always been war and peace. I think Trump has changed it to peace and war. He talks about peace more than he talks about war. He's still hawkish enough to bomb people that need to be bombed like the Houthi rebels. But I get the feeling he's responding to all these new inflows of constituents to the Republican Party. Maybe they were Democrats before. Maybe they weren't even political before.

But they would much rather hear an American president talk about peace. The banner in the Middle East at his rally this week said, peace through strength, which is probably one of the most enduring slogans from the Reagan era. He doesn't agree with them on everything. But on that, I think he's right. But putting peace ahead of war, pretty popular with the American people. I was on this show picking you last year talking about the tour I had done of college campuses for my Snapchat show interviewing students about the election, just asking them open-ended

in the questions. I was shocked the amount of times I heard from young men on campuses, not like Yale or Stanford, like commuter colleges, Cleveland State, Clemson, Penn State, whatever. And they liked that Trump was promising to end wars. However unrealistic that was, he became the anti-war candidate and stole that from the Democratic Party over the years. He does not like war.

I knew that from what people had told me, and when I may have met him in the past recently. How'd that go? It went great, actually. And that's one thing that comes across really plain, which is so ironic because it's sort of like a hippie view. Like, I don't care what you have to do. We're just not going to war.

In his case, surrendering. He surrenders to people. Like to Putin. He just to just surrender because I hate war that much. And you know what? If this stalemate in Ukraine was ever going to not come out the way it is, it makes sense. But we'll see, because he does just surrender.

That's how much he hates war. He had that brand even before he ran for president. When I worked at CNN, Scott's Current Network, back in the day, before he ran for president, when he was doing the whole birther thing, he would call in to, like, Wolf Blitzer's show and, you know, talk shit about George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. He opposed it. And, like, that was part of his brand even before running for president. Okay, so listen, it is graduation season.

I have to tell you parents out there, some of them are very proud now. and what happens during graduation season, as we know, is the kids go out there. And it became a tradition to put the message that you want to greet the new world with on the top of your cap. And now they're even having decorating parties where kids come up, and there it is,

they put the messages on the caps. And you've seen these messages. They're all the same. They're kind of like, thanks mom and dad, and hire me, and on to the next adventure. So every year, it's a tradition here that we show you some of the caps that we've seen,

to write this to... Okay. For example, um... I used AI to write this hat. I did it, Mom and Elon. We'll hate America for food. Oh, wow.

I want to see that on a hat. Luigi, I'll wait for you. Pronouns, they, them. Job prospect, zero zil. Moving my tent from the quad to the sidewalk. Maga the whole time and no one found out. Thanks, Bill Belichick. And this speaker sucks.

Where's Zendaya? Okay. Speaking of college kids, you both have been thinking a lot about young boys. No. It came out well. That came out. I think you may have me mixed up with a Lincoln project. No, no, no.

I'm sorry. What I'm trying to say is that this is an issue that comes up a lot. People write books about it. The stats show us that young boys are in crisis in this company much more than girls. If you look at the numbers in the workplace, in college, how they do reading levels, all this stuff. Boys are falling behind, suicide levels, higher, all that kind of stuff. So Mike Lee, who is the senator from Utah, thinks he has the answer to this, which is to ban porn.

He has a bill. It's not funny to me. Maybe it's funny to you, but I'm taking this very seriously. It's called the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act. Now, look, porn is different than when I was a kid. Are you kidding? I mean, Playboy was super tame. It was some girl standing next to a bail a hay, you know.

It was nothing. And now it is nasty. It really is. I don't look at that type, but I know it exists. Okay, so a couple of questions. But, you know, drugs are also more dangerous than the everywhere. A pot is stronger than it. It doesn't mean that you should outlawed for the people who want to use this stuff responsibly.

The other question I want to ask is, what is the connection here? I mean, why does he think, and is he right, that this is such an important part of the problem that boys are having, is that they're hooked on pornography? I mean, I think this, Donald Trump has papered over the fact that the Republican Party still has a weirdo problem where they want to meddle in your bedroom.

That's real. Like, Mike Johnson... No, Mike Johnson has said he uses an app called Covenant Eyes to monitor his son's porn usage. This is like a public statement. Mike Johnson. the Speaker of the House. Yes.

He and his son, they monitor each other. It's like Alcoholics Anonymous with your dick. Just the way in Alcoholics Anonymous, if you're tempted, you call the sponsor. This way you call your dad or he calls you and says, talk me down from the porn hop. I mean, it's crazy. Okay.

Well, so say Republicans, this gets through the Senate and the House, I don't think it will. Donald Trump would never sign this. What's interesting to me, though, is the Supreme Court heard arguments in January from Texas and people challenging this law at ACLU. There's 18 states in the country, Republican states mostly, that have implemented age-gating rules. So if you live in Texas and you're under 18, you have to provide proof that you're of age to look at those websites. And the court seemed open to upholding these laws.

Now, that gets into data collection. It gets into other, like, constitutional issues. But, like, that seems like it might actually happen. And there is a reasonable debate to be had about the accessibility of porn for young men. If you were our age, like, at my summer camp, some guy in the cabin had the magazines. But there was some friction. You had to, like, go there, ask him for it, get the magazine. Like, now you just pull it up on your phone.

We put all kinds of, I mean, we put the devil in your pocket every day. porn, sports gambling. I mean, these young men, I think, are somewhat in crisis because we put things in their hands that they had to previously work to get. And now, they don't. And so it's easier to do that than going to have a relationship. So you guys are saying,

nasty porn's okay if you work for it. Is that one getting... Is this... I'm just saying, back in the day, it's earned it. But I think the, you know, I'm like you. I tend to, when you're an adult, I'm sort of not sure I'd be in league with banning things for adults. It's a hard thing to do.

However, there is something wrong with our culture on this front. I mean, look what we're teaching young women right now. We're teaching a whole generation of young women that the best and fastest way to get rich is to have sex with people in front of strangers for money. We're teaching. You're talking about only fan? We're teaching young women that if you can have sex with 500 or 1,000 people in a short period of time, you'll be a cultural icon, and that is corrosive for the culture. And so to your point, it's different than it used to be.

And we're, I mean, what are we teaching these girls? It's not just the boys. What are we teaching them about their own personal humanity and value? Okay. I don't think we're teaching them. I think they're doing it because the economy sucks. They don't want to... So you're saying this is the only job they can get?

I'm saying all these people are on only fence. I know, not all of them, but yes, desperation leads people to do things just like that. I don't think most of them would want to do it, but, I mean, we know in this state, there's no way a person can live in this state on a normal salary. And that's one reason. So you can either start only fans or get a new governor or a new government. Maybe you should try that. I mean, I don't, I'm not, I mean, you could change your politics, you know.

No, no. Yeah. Trust me, I don't feel undertaxed here in California. I've complained about the same thing. Okay. So speaking of that, the GOP has a bill now, before today, I see, or maybe it was yesterday, a lot of the Republicans voted against because it adds $2.5 trillion to the debt. I mean, they seem to want to have it all ways.

They want to give all these new tax breaks. I know taxes on tips, stuff like that. But they also want to give the tax breaks to the rich. that they did in the past, and apparently the Democrats and a number of Republicans voted with the Democrats to shoot this down. What do you make of that, Scott? Well, we have a split in the party. This is Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill, and he wants and this is the second half of his agenda. His executive actions and tariffs and everything he's done so far is what he can do, but he is dependent upon the Republicans in Congress

to do the next thing, which is make the tax cuts permanent. cut additional taxes, deregulate energy, and so on and so forth. For the Republicans, in my opinion, failure is not an option, but the party still retains some of the old DNA, the cost-cutting DNA. You know, we spend too much, and we do have almost a $40 trillion debt, so they're not wrong. And so this is going to come to a head this summer. My prediction is they will ultimately do something because Trump is the most powerful person in the party, and he has that much influence.

But the new Trump DNA and the old Republican sort of Tea Party DNA, this is where the friction meets and you're seeing some of this debate play out in the reconciliation process. I agree that Trump is going to be the one ultimately whipping votes. Like that's what he does. Like, Speaker Johnson defers to him. But I think you're right that this needs to get done very quickly.

Republicans admit this. Like, Mike Johnson thinks they're going to send a nice bill to the Senate, and the Senate's going to say, yes, sir, we'll sign off on this. It's the Senate. They're not going to do that. Like the salt deduction. There's no Republicans in the Senate who care about the salt deduction. There's the bird rule. What's the salt

The state and local tax deduction. Your property tax is here in California. Oh, fuck. You're pros on reduction. You're a personal deduction. Remember the Inflation Reduction Act that when Biden and Mansion and Cinauma were doing that whole dance, that was introduced,

I think, in the early summer of 2021. It wasn't signed until the fall of 2022. So, like, that bill is smaller than this bill, and there's not going to be any Democratic votes jumping on board. There were some Republican. votes on that one. I just don't think Republican individual members of Congress are going to want to go home and say, I know you sent me there to support the president, but I was the one person who

stood between him and passing his full agenda. I think the political pressure on them from back home, but they respond to him, not these individual members. And so ultimately, Trump has the ability to move these Republicans to pressure these congressmen. They need to find a way for the party and for Trump, they cannot fail here because his whole economic vision doesn't, one doesn't work without the other. He has to have the tax cuts. He has to have the deregulation. He's a lamb duck. He has to do it now. I don't think any Republican believe in Congress, they don't believe it it was a lame duck. They jump whenever he says jump. Sure, but I'm saying he's got three more years to be president and then the midterms happen. We can assume Democrats take back the

House. I did, I mean, working on this book that I'm writing, I did talk to some... Good plug. Yeah, I know. Smooth. Smooth. You have $30 for it right now. But I talked to someone at one of one. of his political advisors who said the reason he's doing so much at the same time right now is because he knows time is of the essence. He has a finite amount of time to do the things he wants to do, and it goes by quickly. And so he's got a lot of balls in the air, but this reconciliation bill

is a major part of it. Okay. Final question. One minute a half. The American, do you know what that is? It's the idea of Christy Noem to have a new reality show where immigrants compete against each other to win American citizenship. She said, she said it's not like the hunger games even though it sounds exactly like the hunger game what do we think of this idea is this on YouTube? Where is this going to work? No this is real this is real suggested by the Trump

administration she is the thirstiest member of all of them she will do anything to please Mr. Trump run TV ads to do a game show she is so thirsty man well I mean I mean college campuses are running contest right now

to see which students can hate America the most maybe we can have a contest to see who loves them. All right. Thank you, guys. It's time for New Rules. I'm with you on that one. Okay. New Rule, someone has to tell Nikki Wake,

who claims she had a three-way with another woman and her dead husband's ghost. No, what you had was lesbian sex. Which is fine. Just don't drag your dead husband into it. I mean, if you really cared about him, you'd have had this party when he was alive. New Rule, the townspeople of Kimballton, Iowa, who are furious about their tap water having turned pink,

must look on the bright side. The rats in your sewer system are having a girl. Now that this Wisconsin mother of two who went missing from her home in 1962 and was just found alive at the age of 82, everyone must stop pressing her to explain herself. Can a woman run a few errands? New Rule, the Greek woman who's divorcing her husband because she asked, chat GPT to reave the grounds in his coffee cup. And it said he was fantasizing about cheating.

Needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Look, he's a man who just had coffee, which means he's awake, which means he's fantasizing about cheating. Let me put it this way. You know how baseball seems slow? That's on purpose, so we can use the time when nothing is happening to fantasize about cheating.

If you can't figure that out without AI, we really are doomed. A new rule, if you're a gay cardinal of the Catholic Church, hey, it could happen. And during your time in the conclave, you met a cute guy. And now you're wondering, how long should I wait before I call him, so I don't seem desperate? Stop overthinking this.

Pick up the phone. And I mean pick up the phone. Don't text. If you're going to be in the shadows, undercover, and in the closet, at least be up front about it. And finally, new rule, Americans must get over the fantasy they have that they are a people of core convictions and deeply held beliefs. They're not. They only care which side is saying something. Let me give you 10 million examples.

This car used to be fire. Now it's on fire. Back when Elon Musk was presumed liberal, liberals loved electric cars and conservatives hated them. Then Elon went MAGA. And while the car market... grew by 10% last month, cells of electric vehicles were down 5% and not just Tesla's, all EVs. Conversely, Maganation used to hate EVs. Two years ago,

71% of Republicans said they would not consider buying an electric car. Trump said they were for, quote, radical left, fascists, Marxists, and communists. Now he's selling them on the White House lawn. Everything's computer. That's right, Tarzan. Everything's

Computer. Computer good now. And Elon Cybertruck? That's now the official automobile of the Manosphere and the right-wing fuck-you-mobile of the year. Sorry, Dodge Charger. Okay, this is a crazy, shallow way

to make decisions that we all do too much. A new book by David's Wig called an abundance of caution about the repercussions from keeping the schools closed so long during the pandemic has garnered a lot. of attention. And here's the author's takeaway line. The American Academy of Pediatrics were very strongly in favor of getting kids into schools, but as soon as Trump came out in favor of reopening,

they completely reversed their position. Hey, if you find yourself suddenly hating something you loved five minutes ago or vice versa, ask your doctor if Ivermectin is right for you. Remember that debate during the pandemic? On the left, they were saying, Trump and Joe Rogenton took it. It must be for animals. Okay, it won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for what it did for humans. But whatever, the point is, it's a drug. It's not a politician. Drugs don't have political parties.

Although I do suspect Xanax is a Democrat. Do people really want to put politics ahead of their very health? Let me answer that, yes. I know they do, because when Michelle Obama adopted as her first, Lady Project to get America healthy again, Republicans went buck wild, apeshit, real housewives throw

drinks in your face crazy against it because it was Michelle Obama who said it and her program was called let's move. So Republicans bravely took a stand against movement. Sarah Palin made an ostentatious show of bringing

sugar cookies to a school. Because if these fat little boys can see their dicks, liberty dies. Rush Limbaugh wanted to know, are we supposed to eat roots, berries, and tree bark now? Okay, but now that Robert Kennedy, leader of the Make America Healthy Again movement

is in the Trump administration, tree bark good. Fuck yeah, make America healthy. Finally, somebody said it. And when I say somebody, I mean not a black liberal lady. Now it's coming from... Now it's coming from someone more reasonable, a guy with a worm in his brain who believes in chemtrails.

Look, I could do this with almost every issue. Republicans used to hate Russia. It was the Red Menace, the evil empire. Now it's every Republican's dream country. Tucker Carlson, only shops there and at Gelson's. Take the economy, please. When Jimmy Carter was president and told us we should live more within our means, turned down the thermostat, put on a sweater.

Republicans said he was the worst world leader since Dr. Doom. But now that Trump is out there saying, you think $30, you think you'd eat $30 and 100 pencils, go fuck yourself. Crickets. And he's not even wrong. We do buy too much shit. He's just so unfucking, believably the wrong guy to say it.

Okay. Let me give you one more example because this is exhausting, but Marjorie Taylor Green. Now, it would be easy just to make fun of Marjorie Taylor Green. And since this is week 16 of our season, I'm already tired. I think I will. Marjorie Taylor Green, Jewish space lasers. Marjorie Taylor Green. She once said Biden had Gazpacho police. She once demanded answers from Biden about something by June 31st, which is a date that does not exist.

Although to her credit, this is something she later acknowledged on July 44th. Okay, so, so not a genius. However, however, when the Pope died this month and she said Catholic bishops are controlled by Satan, again, ha, ha, ha. But she was talking about the child abuse that's gone on for a thousand years, which is basically the same thing that Chenate O'Connor said in 1992 when she went on SNL and tore up a picture of the Pope, and nothing compared to how great lots of us thought that moment was. So don't be a hypocrite. And that's the challenge to not automatically rush to the opposite viewpoint based solely on who said it.

But until we get to where we can do that, I just hope the Democrats come out strongly next week for dictatorship, coal mining, and making pot illegal. All right, that's our show. We're off next week. But back on May 30th. I want to thank Peter Hadley, Scott Jennings, and General Stanley. the crystal for random drops

every Sunday on YouTube wherever you get your podcast. 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 or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.