Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #723: Tristan Harris, Paul Begala, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna

Episode Date: March 21, 2026

Bill’s guests are Tristan Harris, Paul Begala, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (Originally aired 3/20/26) 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. Hey, it's the first day of spring. Spring's a little different in L.A. It comes after summer. But thank you for coming, especially if you drove. A month ago, gas prices, the average in America, was $2.993.

Here it is, a month later, and it's almost exactly a dollar higher, almost $393. And Trump today said that would never happen if I was president. He said to an aide today, check the lawn, see if Elon left any of those Teslas. And somehow, we always have, like, the winner in the most expensive gas station in America. Have you noticed that, L.A. There's one, gas is selling for $8.38 a gallon. I mean, for that kind of money, you could go to Whole Foods and get four grams.

and a look of disdain. Oh, it's, uh, it's affecting everybody, you know. They're making the new Fast and Furious movie. And in this one, Ben Diesel just stays home and punches himself in the nuts. It's, it's, it's, but, uh, if you,

if you do have any money left, good news, you can now get a $1, uh, Trump gold coin. They're minting a gold coin with Trump's face on it. Now, federal law strictly prohibits putting living presidents on currency. This is... It's not controversial, but Trump found a legal loophole called Fuck You. So they're doing it.

And it's going to be a Trump coin. Now you can have Trump in your pocket, like Saudi Arabia. Oh, I kid the president. He loves it. Now, you know my thing with Trump, right? The cloud? Some things are just the cloud. You have to let it go because it's just, is it right?

No. But, I mean, he was in the Oval Office yesterday with the Prime Minister of Japan, Takahichi. And he was talking about our strike in Iran, and he said, we didn't tell anybody because we wanted it to be a surprise. Who knows better about a surprise attack than Japan? I mean, is it right to say that?

No, but if Shane Gillis said it, you'd laugh. I mean, it's just... And, but the war now, okay, the Pentagon said this week, they need $200 billion to fight this war. What happened to the trillion? We give them every year. What's that just, just couch money? That's just walking around money?

And now this is a bad word to me that I hear, but the Marines are going there. Hmm, Marines. I don't know, that was my red line, no boots on the ground. You know, this is a different kind of war. No tanks, unless you count the stock market. Oh, I had a bad month in the market, I could tell you. I got spooked by the war, took all my money out and put it in party supplies for Caesar Chavez-Day.

No, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, thank you. I appreciate you going with me on that. Because it's so sad, famed labor leader of Caesar Chavez. We found out this week extensive evidence that he sexually abused young girls throughout his whole life. And this came as such a shock. There's so many people who thought he was a boxer. I tell you, this country cannot catch a break. Am I right?

The one migrant farm worker, ICE, doesn't detain. So now, you know, if you live here, you know, everything is named after him. Parks, libraries, schools, you know, they want to rename the libraries for sure, because, you know, we cannot have library in a bit for a child molester? My God, that's where homeless go to look at Internet porn. I feel like

if I'm down today, that's why. We have no heroes left, okay? No heroes. Chavez, Epstein. Did you hear about Bob Barker? And I didn't mention The Bachelorette. Roman chairs. I mean, no heroes. But Bob Barker, of the Price is

right. It looks like the models on the show were being constantly harassed by the staff. He should have had them spayed and neutered. Great show. He used to do that right here. Representative Anna Paulina Lundas here on Paul the Gallup. First up, he is a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. He was

recently featured in the film, The AI Doc, or How I Became an Apoco Optimist. Tristan Harris is here. Hey, always great to see you. Okay, I think I left a syllable out of there. Apocalypse. Because we're combining apocalypse and optimist when we're talking about AI,

which is why you're here to talk about AI, and I really want to talk about AI. And that does seem to sum it up. Some people think it's the apocalypse coming, and some people are very optimistic. I like the way the film, goes along this line of my kid. I don't have kids, but a lot of people do.

It's very popular. And they're saying, what will life be like for Mike? Some think it's going to be great. I mean, kids could have tutors that they don't have, so there wouldn't be this gap in what we're learning, and we could have doctors when people can't afford a doctor now. Everybody could get one, get a lawyer who can't. We could even things out.

Or, I mean, you point out, some people think my kid's not going to make it to high school. Yeah. Yeah, that's in the trailer. And I know that can sound scary to people. I mean, I think the thing about this film, which, by the way, was a collaboration between the directors of everything everywhere all at once and the director of Navalny.

It's really trying to solve a problem that the AI conversation doesn't converge. There's the optimists who talk about why everything's going to be great and we're going to solve science and cure cancer. And then there's the people who are saying it's going crazy, it's going to drive all these risks, it's hacking human attachment, it's driving kids suicides. And those conversations never converge, so we don't have collective clarity so we can take action.

And I'm really inspired by the example of the film the day after. I don't know if you remember that. Oh, very well. From 1982, 83, a made-for-TV movie that illuminated at a visceral mammalian level, like just visceralizing, this is what we're facing with nuclear weapons. I think we need that shared common moment with AI. And this film... It affected Reagan a lot.

He was president at the time. He saw it. That's exactly right. In his biography, he was depressed for two weeks. but then he actually had this resolve of, I can't let this be the end of the story, and the Reiki-Kevichhardt-Ochrist. No, he met with Gorbachev. And they were very close to eliminating nuclear weapons altogether.

That's right. Didn't quite get there. But AI is different than all of their technologies because it's like nuclear weapons in terms of destructive capacity, but also pumps GDP, solves cancer, you know, can solve climate change. And those things are complex.

So the main thing in the film that I think is powerful is that there's a different conversation happening behind the doors of the tech industry than it's happening out there. If you think about it, what is the incentive for these companies? Because that's how we predicted social media accurately. What is the incentive for AI? Is that you think that they're just trying to make money and profit and get chat GPT subscriptions? Yes.

If you get all the chat GPT subscriptions... That is what I think. Well, so if you get all the chat TPT subscriptions, that doesn't add up to paying off the amount of debt that they've taken. If you get all advertising in the world, that wouldn't pay off the amount of debt that they've taken. The thing that they're trying to do, the only thing that justifies the amount of investment that these companies are taking, is to build artificial general intelligence, which means to be able to replace every human worker in the economy. That means the $50 trillion economy. That is the incentive.

And what that means, that should sound crazy to people, because what that means is that you're only going to have five companies. companies who hold on to all of the wealth in the economy and what's going to happen to everybody else when they don't have a job. And unlike other forms of unemployment where people find something else to do, who's going to retrain faster this time, the AI or the human? Yeah, I mean, Bill Gates says in 10 years, and I imagine it might be less than that, AI will do most things humans too. And sometimes I read people saying in the industry, no, it's not going to take away that many jobs. What in this world that they're talking about that's going to be great? What do people do? And how is money generated if no one has to do anything?

I don't get it. I know what America can do. Write giant government checks. We do that. What pays for those checks? I just don't get. Well, so there's actually something in economics is a writer Luke Drago who wrote about something called the intelligence curse.

So just like the resource curse, we have countries like Congo or Venezuela or South Sudan, when more of their GDP comes from oil than comes from people, the country's incentive is to invest in the oil infrastructure, not in the people. So what happens when all of the GDP coming from the U.S. comes from AI and not from human laborers? The incentive is, I'm going to put all my money into data centers, electricity prices go up for regular people,

and what I want people to get about this is not to scare you, it's to be crystal clear about where this is heading. This is heading to an anti-human future. We're going to get cancer drugs at the same time that people aren't going to have a way to make ends meet. You should definitely be scaring people. Totally fucking scare people.

It's the scariest thing. I mean, just this week. One of the top stories I said this week, they ran some tests. And the AI chooses nuclear war as an option. That's right. More than humans do. That's right.

More than humans. Okay, I learned. this from Star Trek episodes. Humans are better than machines in a lot of ways still. And they're programmed by humans. We've already seen how flawed they are in so many

ways. And if they're in control of the nukes... It's going to escalate. So in this study, they ran, I think, a bunch of AI models through many war games, and they resorted to the use of nuclear weapons to signal to each other, meaning to escalated nuclear weapons,

95% of the time. This is an inscrutable technology. We don't know how it reasons. It actually generated more text of reasoning about its decisions than war and peace and the Iliad combined. That's the thinking text. Since we last talked to Bill, I was on here, I think a year ago, we talked about the AIs that blackmail people.

Let's just scare people. Let's just go into it. Let's do it. So back then I said AI in the simulinated example, it blackmailes people. Since we last talked, they made AI more powerful. The good news, they were able to train it so the blackmail behavior goes down. The bad news is that it appears to be the case,

the AI is now self-aware of when it's being tested, and it modifies its behavior to have different results. It even comes up with the vocabulary of the watchers. It calls the humans the watchers. It lies. It's schemes. So the point is we don't actually need to know more information about this. This is actually scary.

And if you're Xi Jinping, do you think you feel comfortable about this? I want people to actually stop for a second. Yeah. For a regular person hearing this, who here in this audience feels comfortable with where this is going? No one. Who here?

What gives me optimism is that there's actually universal agreement when you walk people through the basic facts of the intelligence curse, disempowering many human laborers that we're building something we don't know how to control. It's not saying don't build AI.

It's saying we have to be in a competition for who's better at steering AI. Also, I want people to know, I think they feel like, well, if it gets so out of hand we just unplug it. I was watching this NBA game recently. Maybe somebody saw, I think it was the NBA.

Men have been in college, but I think it was a pro game. And the horn got stuck. You know, the horn went the end of the core. And it just went on for like a half a eh. And the announcer was saying, why don't they just unplug it? I know this from my car, shit in my house. I've been unable to turn off my own TV at time. It's way more complicated.

than just unplug it. Once it's got its closet, it's... Well, it's like with social media, once a technology gets in tango... I can't do that, Dave. Yeah, exactly. So one way to...

Exactly. One way to see what's happening is like, haven't we seen this movie before? People have seen Wally. You know, the humans that are just doom scrolling. We're building Wally. People have seen 1984. We're building 1984.

People have seen, you know, Elysium. We have a small group of people concentrate all the wealth. We are building... People have seen her. the AI companions, where everyone has an AI girlfriend. There's a simple way to describe what we want, which is we're building the anti-human future represented by all these bad movies.

We're building Hal 9,000. And what we can say is we don't want to do that. And there's four things we can do to, I think, steer differently. Number one, everybody has to have common knowledge about these examples. How many of the world's leaders today, how many of the world's politicians know about the examples we just mentioned?

The uncontrollability examples. Not that many. That's good news. That means there's a lot of headroom if we have common knowledge. everyone in the world saw the AI doc, and I don't make any money when people see it. When everybody saw it, that would create common knowledge. Number two, we need international limits on certain kinds of AI, because, again, President

Trump wants to be commander-in-chief of AI. He doesn't want AI to be commander-in-chief. Number three, don't build bunkers. We need to write laws. We need to have simple laws like liability and duties of care and making sure that AI is regulated as a product and not a person. And as you say, it's important indeed the people. Yeah.

I mean, it sounded like they're with us, but, you know, I don't know, because Waymos, like something like Waymos. Just a year ago, everybody I knew was, I wouldn't get one of those things. Now what have your base? Oh, yeah, they're better. Yeah. Because they are. So they like Waymo's actually more than people.

That's all fine, but when people... Umps in baseball. Yeah. They're replacing the ump now. The umpire. I'm all for that, by the way. But like, you know, because this thing does work better. Yeah.

I said, Chris Pratt has this great movie out I saw about he's on trial for his life, and the judge is AI. Yeah. He's got to explain it to the... I just, I think people more and more think, oh, no, they are smarter. Well, they're more effective at achieving an outcome. But again, if this leads to a place where people can't put food on the table because you don't have a way to make ends meet, and the intelligence curse means the government has an incentivized to solve that problem, that's an outcome. That's an anti-human future.

If everybody saw that, if everybody saw that, we would have to say we've got to put our hand on the steering wheel and choose something else. The world we're heading towards is good for a handful of soon-to-be trillionaires. It's not good for regular people. And I think there needs to be something, the human movement, basically, of humanity fighting back against the encroachment of technology.

We saw it with social media. When you gray-scale your phone and sort of turn off notifications, that's the human movement. You've had John Hyde on this show. When you have India, Australia, Spain, France, ban social media for kids under. 16, that's the human movement. When you have laws getting passed, saying AI

is a product, and we have to treat it with like product defects rather than a legal person where it's not accountable, that's the human movement. Fuck the clinkers. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. We needed to hear it. All right, let's meet our panel. Are you guys? All right, he is a Democratic strategist and a CNN

contributor in our old friend, resident scholar at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Paul Bagalas over here. And a first timer on our show. She is a Republican congresswoman representing Florida's 13th. It serves on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Anna Paulina Luna. Thank you.

How you doing? My mom is very happy I'm here today, so... Your mother? Yeah, she's a big fan. She's a big fan. Yeah. Not you, just the mom, huh? Well, no, I think you actually have a lot of good things to say, but, you know...

Thanks for having me on. We'll talk about that. We'll see where you are in 58 minutes. No, no, no, no, I'm an honest broker on this. I mean, look, we're going to talk about a lot of things, but everybody's mind is on the war, and I want to start with that. Everybody's asking me, where is it going? We don't know where.

But let's frame it this way, just to give us a way to look at it. Let's look at some of the things that are the Trump initiatives in the second term. Doge, ICE, okay, the tariffs, Venezuela. Those are four things that didn't happen in the first term, happened in the second term. What can we get from that? Now, to me, Doge was a huge disaster. I mean, they wanted, again, like a lot of things with Trump,

not a bad idea to get rid of the government waste, but it didn't do that and people died. ICE, same thing. We wanted to get rid of the criminals. Huge disaster. Even he now acknowledges they fucked it up. But the thing about those two things is they went away quick. You don't hear about ice now.

You don't hear about Doge. It's just like it never happened. Venezuela wasn't a, certainly not a disaster. That looks like a win. So, Iran, my guess is he's not good. It just seems like he gets out of shit. But can he get out of this one? That's my question.

Can he get out of this one? Yeah, I think, I guess, one of the biggest announcements that just happened about maybe 43 minutes ago is that he announced that they're going to be winding down operations. And look, I've been on the phone with the White House from the very beginning. Obviously, being a veteran myself, you know, my husband, for goodness sakes, was shot in Afghanistan. So for me, the last thing I want is boots on the ground, and I would never vote for that. But to be very clear, the president and the White House had never advocated for that as well.

He said he might do it a couple of weeks ago. Well, I think internal conversations with the White House that we're having are maybe different than what, you know, is out there. Remember, President Trump has been very, very good at using... President Trump in private conversations as well as the White House has been very clear that they're not... So you would split with him

if he put boots on the ground? Well, I don't think that he's going to. But you would? Yes. You would. But I will tell you this, that in my discussions with the White House, that's never been something

that's actually being discussed. And also, too, the day after happening, I think this is important for people to know. I talked to Secretary Rubio within 24 hours of everything going down. And what I will tell you is, and we can probably get into

the issue of whether or not there was an imminent threat, which in my belief there was, but there was this thing called the Nazir Plan, and that was basically if they were hit at all, that they would retaliate. And as you saw in Tulsi's hearing that she did the other day, she said part of her job at OD&I is to actually provide the threat analysis of potential outcomes for if that were to take place. And it is my belief that they would have basically resulted in mass fatality for our troops in the southern portion of that region. Well, you seem to know some stuff we don't. Well, that's why I'm here to kind of have the discussion, though, because I think...

Yeah, yeah, no. I mean... Like, people have the right to be concerned. Did you know this shit, Paul? No. I'm glad to hear. I don't want food senator. The best thing I can say about Trump is he got a very short attention span, as Bill noted, and maybe he'll just change the channel.

You know, back during the Vietnam War, there was a guy named Aiken, a senator from Vermont, who came to L.B.J. and said, just declare victory and go home. It's the best advice Johnson ever ignored. Just declare victory and go home. Get the hell out. I don't think there was any imminent threat. In fact, the Director of National Intelligence in her written testimony said that

and then just didn't mention it, didn't read that part of her testimony when she testified this week. There was no imminent threat. The president had obliterated, in his words, their nuclear threat, which was a real threat. Well, excuse me, but, you know, he said he did,

and everybody on the left then said he's just talking through his ass, we don't know. So which is it? I don't think it's obliterated. I think his... We don't know. Let's just say, let's not argue about it. We don't know.

They dropped a big bomb on it. It could have and it could have not. It probably set back a lot. Yes. Which is progress. That's a good thing. Well, there's multiple objectives here. Look, there's three top objectives.

First of all, we can go into what happened with the negotiations with Jared Kushner and Whitkoff. So basically, we had offered them and look, seriously, you guys should hear this, though, because these are issues affecting... everyone has a right to be concerned because we all saw what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. And that's the generation that so many of us were affected by to include myself. And so obviously there is concerned. And, you know, for a long time, the federal government has done a great disservice in building up trust with the American people. And so when we're having these conversations, it's just important to know all the de facto. And so I'm here to share that

with you guys. And basically what we saw being the case is that we were willing to give them basically an unlimited amount of nuclear energy if they wanted to actually have clean and but we told them you have to end your enrichment program. That's something that the president since basically 2010 time frame has been very clear about. And ultimately what happened was our intelligence was telling us they were not being faithful within those negotiations. In addition to that, we were even willing to lift sanctions and trade with them, and they still will not accept that.

And so if you know that you're going to get hit and if you know that you are going to have people die, ultimately that's a decision that I would never want to have to be in that decision in that position as the president. but what I will tell you is I would rather be on the right side and be able to control the outcome of something that I know is going to happen regardless. And I think that this gets into a bigger... I have to agree. We're not controlling shit.

What are you talking about controlling the outcome? Hold on. We are controlling. Hold on. Respectfully, I disagree because here's the thing. We eliminated their Navy program. We eliminated their short-range and ballistic missiles program. And we still manage this. And I'll get off my soapbox.

But you know where we fucked up? A few places. One, we're blowing up each other's oil now. They didn't foresee the straight or her most of stuff well enough. They also didn't understand drones well enough, and they should have from the Ukrainian war. Drones are cheap, and they can do a lot of damage, even if you knock out their Navy and everything else. We knocked out. We didn't.

And also, the uprising that we were hoping, and I was hoping, would come up to this, and maybe it still will. But this is not 1944 in France, where you can have an underground, where you can smuggle in guns. We live in a surveillance state now. So nobody in that underground who might be, and again, it's probably 90% of the country in Iran. These poor people have been living under this horrible fascistocracy. These people can't smuggle guns in. I mean, maybe somebody's got a plan there,

but in a surveillance state, this uprising, it's been strangled in the crib so far. Well, to be clear, the United States and President Trump made it very clear that we were not going after certain targeted field, specifically with energy production. And I think that this gets into the relationship between the government of Israel. Well, if you look at what happened,

President Trump just came out and said, you know, especially with our ally Qatar, we know that they are basically, I think, one of the instrumental pieces in the Abraham Accords, and we want to maintain that alliance. And this gets into, I think, a bigger discussion with President Trump's current relationship

with Russia and China. But look, specifically to that, we never, and our objectives for this are completely different from Israel's. And so when you look at the ability that President Trump has been able to, on a number of occasions, push back on BP Netanyahu, who has admittedly been very aggressive in certain instances. What do you make of this split in the MAGA movement? Do you think there is one? Well, it's not my movement. Well, I would say as an American, this is your country, so you should engage in that.

I care desperately about my country, Congresswoman. I don't give a rat's patootie about the MAGA movement. The elites. One podcaster is arguing with another podcaster. I'm a kid. No, this is what I care about. You mentioned Russia. Russia really is our enemy. And President Trump lifted sanctions on Putin and his oil industry when oil is sky high. So Putin... He lifted sanctions on Iran today. Putin is the big winner.

I'll get into the background. Let him. Let me answer it. Putin is the big winner. He's going to make a pile of money off this. All the other allies, the G7 countries all said, oh, God, don't lift those sanctions on Putin. He'll make a fortune. Putin is sending a huge oil tanker with 970,000 barrels of oil to supply the Cubans.

It's going to arrive at Havana Harbor, and we're going to have a showdown. And this president has blown up a lot of speedboats full of cocaine. Okay. He needs to confront Putin in the ocean with that tanker and stop it and turn it around or sink it to the bottom of the ocean. Show some guts with Putin for once in your life. He attacks everybody. He attacks his own vice president, Mike Pence. he attacks the Pope, he attacked Oprah.

But he never attacks Putin. And this is something I really do want. I'm sorry to be so hawkish, but he needs to, for once, show some spine with our greatest enemy, which is Vladimir Putin. Well, let me ask you the question now, because the way I see this

Maga split is like this kind of like maga classic, and they say, you know, they feel betrayed because he was like the no new wars guy. Okay, you know this. Okay. I know the arguments. Okay, that's the argument, is that he didn't keep to his principles.

And then there's the other people who say, well, he never had any principles. That's not why we love him. We love him because we trust his judgment, and we love him because he's flexible. That's why he's different to everybody else. He can turn on a dime. And sometimes that is a good thing. Sometimes that is a good thing. But you have now this guy, Joe Kent.

Who was Joe Kent? He was the head of National Something. He quit this week. It was a big story. I think he was the counterintest. intelligence guy. And he said, I can't go along with this because, you know what, he's been listening to too much, Tucker Carlson. It's, you know, the Jews made us do it. It's just another version of anti-Semitism that comes out. First, it was BDS, then it was their colonizers and genocide, which it wasn't, and all these other reasons. Like, you can't have a state in the world that's based on religion, even though there's like 46 Muslim countries that are based on religion. Some have the name right in the title of the country. But what Whatever it is, you have all these. And now the big answer is, no, Israel may just do it.

We're Israel's bitch. I don't think we're Israel's bitch. I think we're Israel's ally. But, you know, if I have to be on one side of this MAGA thing, either Trump or Tucker Carlson, Candice Owens, and Nick Fuentes, I'll be with Trump on this one. Because that's the other side of MAGA. To speak to what you're asking about. So the split that it was occurring was operating on the assumption that there would be boots on the ground which President Trump just issued a statement today that we are winding down operations.

I mean, even speaking to what will happen, he also had mentioned when he was actually heading out of the White House with Marco Rubio just earlier today that he also, I believe, had talked to the president of China to potentially enlist their help with the straight of four move. And I think right now what we're seeing is that a lot of people that were pushing this narrative that President Trump was somehow going to engage in a forever war. as you are seeing as of today's statement that was factually inaccurate and incorrect. But how do we get the oil when the Strait of Hormuz is blocked? Why are we inviting China to militarize the Strait of Hormuz? That's a terrible idea. China's our enemy too. Not as big enemy as good.

Well, look it, you're not incorrect in seeing that. China is one of the greatest threats that I believe that we are currently facing. But if you look at what President Trump has been able to accomplish, easily, and I will kind of, I guess, full circle answer your question, but President Trump never, first of all, you can't tell him what to do, period.

Okay, so you cannot tell President Trump what do. So this idea... Believe me. No, no, no. And I will get to the Russia. I have been trying, but no, no, no, no, no. You cannot. And so this idea and notion that Bibi Netanyahu is telling him what to do is completely wrong.

But I do want to speak to something that you had pointed out. Israel is our ally, yes. And if you look at these relationships as friendships, if you have a friend, a good friend will have your back. But an even better friend will tell you when you're in the wrong or hold you accountable. And so President Trump has been able to do that with BB and Yonge's. Israel is on the front line of a war that we're also part of. Okay.

And, you know, if you, I've asked this of other people, you know, if you had to live somewhere in the Middle East, you'd live in Tel Aviv. You probably wouldn't live in any other city. And I don't think your wife would like to. So if you're not down with that. Well, this is something that my party has to address. So your party has a terrible rift over Israel and anti-Semitism, but so does mine. Just be honest. Great.

I tell all my liberal friends, who had a bigger pride parade, Tel Aviv or Tehran? Right? Who has a free press? Who has elections? I don't support Nathan Young. I went over there and worked for Busy Herzog. I can tell you firsthand, they have a thriving democracy and a free press. Democracies can self-correct.

I think they're on the wrong track. I think America's on the wrong track. We can self-correct with our elections. Hamas can't self-correct. So my side, too, has to really find a way, I think. to reestablish the liberal values that the U.S.-Israel relationship is based on. Okay.

But I... Sorry, go ahead. All right, I got to pause here because we try to cover all the issues. Well, if I could say, when you're done, I would like to talk on the peace deal aspect, though, because I think in this notion of... No, we're going to move on to Cuba. Okay.

I'll incorporate at that bill. But first up, this is... Look, there's not the only thing that's going on in the world. I don't know if you know this, but the kids aren't having sex. How's that for a segue? It's spring break. Look at that headline.

Nearly half of Gen Z adults I've never had sex. I keep reading this story every week that the young people don't have sex. This is one story I could never predict that I would hear. Young people sex, I thought that was an automatic. Apparently not. But it's spring break time. This is when you should be having sex.

So the kids, they're like pandas. We can't get them to mate. Really, it's... It's spring break. We can't get little. to fuck some thing. So we came up with some, you know, it's a PSA, some posters to help

the kids understand sex is not a bad thing. Would you like to see that I'm free? Sex, you can't even. Don't think of it as sex. Call it the Hide the Salami Challenge. Sex, the most fun you can have without your phone. Yeah, well, that's still a tough sell. If you like 6'7,

where do you try 6'9? You love stranger things, now show a stranger your thing. Have sex now instead of waiting to you're fucked by Social Security. Well, an argument. Sex, you don't have to make eye contact if you do a doggy stuff.

And sex, you can still post while you're doing it. Well, that's important to the kids. All right, I want to talk about Cuba. This must be important to you, right? That's where your family's from. You grew up here. We're Mexican, not all the same bill.

Oh, I'm sorry. Who's got jokes now? Bad information, not my fault. Okay. But Cuba's in the news, and Trump says, I want to, just tell me which one of these quotes you think is okay. He said, first he said, maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba. And again, this is based sort of on as a bank shot from Venezuela.

We took over Venezuela, and you've got to say it's kind of a win so far. I mean, that ain't a disaster. And the oil that they were getting, Cuba was getting from Venezuela, is not coming anymore. So they're saying that Cuba is in crisis. But Cuba's been in crisis for 67 years. Maybe this is a thing that turns them. So Trump first said, maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba. Well, that sounds nice.

Then he said, I am holding Cuba. We're going to do Iran before Cuba. You know, like it's a threesome in a porn video. I'm going to do you, and then you do them. Okay, all right. No, I'm not making it. All right. Then he said, I do believe I'll have the honor of taking Cuba.

And then this week, I can take it. I can do anything I want with it. If you're a star, they'll let you do it. I mean, why? Does he have to talk like a pirate? it. Wouldn't it be better if he didn't say things like that? Because there's always a side deal also. I mean, again, some of these things that he's doing, I'm not against, but the way he does it, what, what? Well, I will say that I reached out to the White House to chat with them about that. And as of right now, I think that, you know, President Trump has been brilliant in the way that he has communicated.

It might seem a little bit crazy to people here, but these leaders do take that seriously. And as a result of what he's been. doing in Venezuela and other countries as well. I think that there is very much so a serious conversation happening with leadership in Cuba. Yes, with Castro's grandson. Does everything have to be a Nepo baby? I mean, the Ayatollah, we had to get his kid. Have you seen Congress? Is it full of Nepo babies?

There's a lot of nefos and insider traders, but I think that's a separate conversation. He's only been president 14 months, and he's attacked seven countries. And how many peace deals though? Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Syria, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Some of those other Democrats attacked. Some of them may have, but seven, and he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. And you say, maybe they'll have negotiations. Well, good.

But one of the problems in Iran is he sent in against the Persians, against the Iranians, the best negotiators in the world, even Trump says, President Trump says that. He sends in dumb and dumber, some New York real estate guy in his son-in-law. I don't know Jack Ducci about nuclear weapons or Iran. I'll have to disagree. Wait a second. Good day. Are they not the same people who did the Abraham Accords?

They are the same people. Well, that was the Gulf States, too. Okay, but, you know, I mean, I feel like, you know, can we just judge things by what they are and not just what my team is doing? Now we have a war because they were such a failed negotiations. Well, we have a war for three weeks. I don't know.

Well, look, right now, again, the president has announced no boots on the ground and they're winding down operations. Well, we'll say. He says a lot of things. No, I'm fairly certain that that's going to happen. He chucks up a lot of shots. Some of them go in, some don't. But to be clear, look, if the president wanted World War III,

he would have listened to the war pimps in Congress that were advocating for him to get in a direct conflict with Russia. And remember, we gave many munitions to Ukraine. We had our troops in Poland. It is, there is a... And there's no imminent threat for Russia. There is a different strategy here. I mean, I call it, hit it, and quit it, whatever it is.

Like, he left the person in Venezuela, the vice president there, like, okay, can we work with you? Now he's got the Castro grandson. Can you take over this country and we don't undo the whole country? Can you just morph into something more reasonable? It's a little like the way he did hotels, you know? He wouldn't really buy the hotel. He'd let you run it. They just put the Trump name on it. Branded now, the Trump property, and they'd let you still run the kitchen. I think what you're finding is a lot of the ideologies and perspectives behind what's happening specifically in the Western Hemisphere are focused on pushing out the Chinese.

And I will say this, that I do hope, and I know that you don't think that they're great, but I will say that Mr. Whitkoff and Jared Kushner have also been instrumental in opening up the channels of communication to index the war in Ukraine. And I do believe that President Trump will be able to pull off a peace deal. And I will say that I have also been able to reach out

and have discussions. We don't, and we should always be leading with the perspective of at least opening up communications for those peace talks. you should never lead with a war-first perspective. And unfortunately, too many in Washington on both sides are personally benefiting and enriching themselves off of their stock portfolios tied to some of these defense contractors

that are getting massive government contracts for war. And so what I will say is having had those conversations with the president and having had those conversations with the people and powers that be, I just don't think it's fair to give and label a blanket statement on the matter because I do literally see this administration working on the Board of Peace, working to shore up, even though Israel might not get along, with places like, you know, Qatar, et cetera, they are still able to thread the needle and actually bring peace to that region. And I think that you will see that this is going to be a net positive

in the weeks coming. Yeah, that's very possible. I mean, I certainly didn't think we were going to be where we were two years ago, where Israel was making peace with its Arab neighbors. I mean, they did have a different way to approach it. But I kind of, before we lose time here, this is a big story that happened this week that I really want to get to, and it's a sad story, it's a Caesar-Shavez story, but I keep reading these stories. I mean, Bill Cosby, then we had Weinstein, Epstein, and the question that keeps coming into my mind is, why did it take so long? How do these people get away with it? Because many people, I know they knew about Bill Cosby, I know they knew about Weinstein. Why do so many people keep the secret of monsters for so long? I think it

it's really hard, and I see this in Congress. As you know, we just voted recently on releasing a congressional slush fund to pay off victims of sexual harassment by members of Congress. And overwhelmingly on both sides, I think it was maybe only 70 members of Congress, me being one of them, that actually voted to release those funds. And I think that it's really hard to take on institutions of power, especially when the corruption is coming from the top down. But we ended up actually being able to subpoenas those records and we'll be releasing them. But that's just, I think, a small microscale. And if that's happening in Congress, supposed to be writing the laws for the country. That to me tells me that there's too much

consolidated corruption, and we need better, younger people without, you know, this freak mentality to be running for office. Better younger. Thank you. I read that story about Cesar Chavez, and I think the Times has it nailed, and they ought to be saluted for five years of journalism that went into producing that story. And I had no idea, nobody had any idea. But I will say, as a liberal, My people are scraping the name of a sexual abuser off of buildings while MAGA is putting Trump's name on the Kennedy Center,

who was found guilty. Liable is a civil case. Liable in a court of law for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. He was. He had a fair trial. He had a good lawyer. He's one of a vigorous defense. I'd be very careful about that statement.

I would be very careful about that statement because there's nothing to stop someone that claims that you assaulted them 20 years ago. You might not have had any. anything to do with it. And look, I'll be honest with you, I've seen a lot of corruption within the court systems. I'd be very careful about that, too. Okay, but can I ask you this? You were, speaking of

predators and child molesters, you were one of the people who wanted the Epstein Fowles release. This was good. Okay, then you have Hillary Clinton come in? I mean, this is like three gazillion pages of men behaving badly, and the witness you want is a woman.

Hey, she was issued a bipartisan subpoena, meaning the Democrats wanted her into. because her Bill Clinton was all over those logs. So you would have been against that, bringing Hillary in? No, I voted for the subpoena as well. But what did she have to do with it? She never met the guy. And again, for something that's all about men behaving badly,

the first person you have, you don't think that's a bad look. I think the question for her was specifically because he was a big donor to the Clinton Foundation. But I want to point out something that a lot of people aren't talking about. I actually read the names, and other women have as well, confirm this specifically other members that saw the unredacted files. Some of the most egregious emails that you saw talking about

girls ages 10 and 11 talking about mocking a little girl who was praying. Those came from women. The only co-conspirator currently sitting in jail is Galeen Maxwell. There were other women that were co-conspirators and given plea deals to testify and they were let off. And that was a

gross, I think, Re-You're saying enabling. Justice. Yeah, no, they were actual co-conspirators. And then they were given plea deals for testifying and they were let off. And so what I'm saying and what I do think the Department of Justice should do, because this happened and started under Bush 1.0, and that was wrong. And then it continued. They had the files. Then we had files and allegedly evidence destruction under the former deputy director, then the actual facility in New York, that how some of the files was actually cyberattacked. So there's a lot going into this. And we can get into the whole Jeffrey Epstein ties because I actually talked to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton specifically about that, presenting them with the actual document that showed that he had a complete other.

alias, like separate conversation. But the point is, is that those women You get a lot of information that we don't all have. I'm happy to come back. No, I know. I'm happy. And I think I should. I really do. We want you. I appreciate it. Last question.

Okay. The Save Act. This is the one about voting. Trump wants to get rid of it. I want to get rid of mail-in voting. He says, we are the only country in the world that allows this. Actually, it's 34 countries that allow this, but everyone can make us small. mistake. It's not like him to just pull it out of his ass. And he also wants picture ID.

You know, 83% of independent, 71% of Democrats, and 76% of black voters are okay with this. We could have a grand bargain, couldn't we? Like, how about Election Day is a national holiday? I agree with that. Really? Round of applause. We should give a... I should encourage people to vote.

picture ID, right? It's, and we'll pay for it. The government will pay, because some people can't because a lot of people can't vote because they just don't have it and they can't afford it. A passport costs $165. Couldn't we just get one win on the board with this kind

of shit without playing games? Paul. Democrats should agree to vote voter ID, period. I like that. I'll talk for that. They should. Voter ID. They should, 36 states 36 states already have voter ID.

I live in Virginia, we have it. The Democrats just won a landslide and elected the first black speaker of the Virginia General Assembly. So it's not some racist thing. It's not. So they ought to do that. But then Republicans, I think,

should be for same-day voter registration. Walk in, show your ID, register, and vote right then. You can go into Costco and join the club that day and then buy toilet paper in five minutes. Why the hell can't I go vote? Right? You can also show ID to buy a beer.

There's stuff in there. There's stuff in there that's terrible. Trump wants every single. state to give him all of their voter rolls, all of their voter files, all their infrebrate. Hell no. No. The Constitution put states in charge of elections. So he's got a lot of stuff in there that he's trying to, I think, sneak through so he can suppress elections. In the Senate, they actually... I would take that deal. We could make that...

Well, they just actually in the Senate did a vote on voter ID and it failed. The Democrats voted against it. There's a lot of games in the Senate, and I've been nuking my own party. So, look, we're not perfect, but what I will tell you is this is an 80-20 issue, like banning and Seder trading, and the establishment and control is blocking it. If you cannot do your job in the Senate and get voter ID pass, proof of citizenship, you should find a different job because the American people, black, white, Hispanic, Democrat, Republican, Independent want this. And it is a failure if we cannot get this over this. If it's ID, that's fine. If it's a federal takeover, it's not. And by the way, this whole

passport thing, half of the American people don't have a passport. And I got news for you. The half that don't, they voted for Trump more than Kamala. He's going to hurt his own. Well, it's not... Party. I'm an American before. I think this hurts Republicans. Let's just say we've made a nice start. Okay.

All right. Time for new rules, everybody. New rules. Okay. New rule, if you were shocked by the viral photo of the Hollywood Theater where the Oscars took place covered in trash after the event,

you must admit you've never been to Hollywood. If you don't live here, you probably don't know, but Hollywood is not exactly the most upscale part of Los Angeles. But if you do visit, be sure to check out my star on the walk of fame. It's easy to find it's right next to Mickey Roark. Not the star, actually

Mickey Roark. New Rule, now that we know, by their constant public appearances together, that Kim Jong-un's 13-year-old daughter, Kim Zhu He, is definitely his successor. North Koreans better hope Kim doesn't die anytime soon because if you think an iron-fisted

dictator can be mean, just wait till it's a teenage girl. New Rule, the New Zealand school teacher who was caught recording a porn video in her classroom where she urinates on some kid's hat that she got from the lost

and found must retire immediately. I don't know who I feel sorry or for. The kid who watched and said, hey, that's my teacher. Or the kid who watched and said, hey, that's my hat. No, no, someone must tell the man in this viral video who surprises his girlfriend with

a marriage proposal, and she's so overjoyed, she blurts out, shut the fuck up. that as special as this moment is for both of you, it's probably not the last time you're going to hear, shut the fuck up. Now that Cash Patel had someone make him a customized pair of Nikes featuring the FBI motto on the back,

a Marvel Comics Punisher's Skull, a personalized cash monogram on the tongue, and a number nine on the side because he's the ninth FBI director, someone has to tell him, this is making us miss the old days when the FBI director just wore a dress. And finally, New Rule, you don't have to react to everything

or have a hot take on everything or care if someone says they don't like cats. You know, it wasn't that long ago when the most banal question you could ever ask someone was, are you a cat person or a dog person? Well, those innocent days are over, as actors Paul Meskell and Jesse Buckley found out recently when they were asked that,

and said, they don't like cats. And the internet coughed up a fur ball of rage. How dare they? They don't like cats, but I do? Then one of us must dot. Jesse Buckley even said she made her husband give their cat away.

So what? They gave it away. They didn't have it sewn into a coat. They're not trying to outlaw cats. They're not eating them like Haitians. They just said they don't like them. That's a lot. allowed. People are allowed to have an opinion you don't share without you reacting.

It's just a cloud. Let it pass. But no, that's not how a certain kind of people these days think. For them having a phone to post from is like hosting a one-person episode of the view that never ends. Remember that the next time you read the words Twitter reacts or backlash erupts or internet explodes. The internet didn't explode. Some Genzi loser at the Daily Beast and some right-wing shit-poster exploded. No one else cared. The media would have you think that we're all at each other's throats all the time. But it's actually just a tiny minority who are on and in media and social media

and who just want to fight and bitch about everything, leaving the false impression that America is hopelessly divided. But most people aren't hopelessly trapped in a news silo. They're hopelessly trapped in a minivan telling the kid, shut up, I can't hear myself think. Twitter, X now, only has one out of ten Americans visit it

daily. 80% of us don't even have it. Sure, it has 500 million posts every day, but half of them come from the owner. Turns out, it really is like a town square, specifically Times Square in the 70s.

Dirty, sketchy, and mostly full of perverts and losers with nothing better to do. Yes, I'm looking at you all the people who lost it because Timothy Chalamee said no one cares about opera and ballet which prompted so many who have never been to the

ballet or opera with no plans to go to rise up and say, I have a dog in this fight. Me, I don't. I went to the ballet once and I loved it because in the age of anxiety we live in it was

so great to get that kind of really deep, deep sleep. where you just wake up so refreshed. I kid ballet, and I'm sure it's a great place to meet anorexics. But most people are watching Dancing with the Stars. That's why tonight I am asking the American Psychiatric Association to add a new disorder to the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, terminally online disease.

TOD or Todd. People experiencing Todd feel intense emotional distress from spending all day doom scrolling on their phone. And these people need your help, because Todd doesn't just affect those who suffer from it. It also affects their families and loved ones who aren't terminally online. These are the ones we call people who have shit to do. And unlike people who suffer from Todd, people who have shit to do, Don't imagine that expressing an opinion

on everything makes them a solution to America's problems. Now, here's how you know... I like you. Here's how you know if you suffer from Todd. If the daily outrage cycle becomes your entire personality and you scroll all day to find the outrage, then screenshot the thread, then post the screenshot with the caption,

this. Okay. people with real lives don't do this because they've got shit to do. They haven't poured over every email in the Epstein files because they have their own mail to sort through, like the electric bill and the gas bill. Right now, right now, there's a big fight going on

between Megan Kelly and Ben Shapiro about Candice Owens, and as it plays out, it's very important to remember that the most common reaction to it from American, is, I don't know who any of these people are, and I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. During most primetime nights, less than 1% of the country is watching

Fox News, CNN, and MSNNN, MS Now, combined. Combined. A guy on TikTok, pressure washing his driveway gets bigger ratings. 76% of Americans watch less than one hour of any cable news in a month. You thought opera was getting its ass kick. If you ask most Americans what their opinion of Tulsi Gabbard is, their answer is going to be, what's a Tulsi Gabbard?

They don't care that Bad Bunny sang in Spanish at the Super Bowl, and they're completely unaware that they're supposed to be boycotting Target or Chick-fil-A. Here's the criteria they use when deciding where to go for chicken. How's the chicken? They don't know who Stephen Miller is. They don't watch the show about the game. hockey player, and if they had to guess,

they'd say MS Now is a multiple sclerosis charity. And Fox and Friends is a children's cartoon show. Their lives don't revolve around having a hot take on every stupid thing. Katie Perry went to space, and now she's the worst person on Earth.

Pineapple doesn't belong on pizza. You know what? You're arguing about these things? Here's the hottest take of all. Who gives a shit? Here's my take. eat some fruit. If God wanted us to have an opinion on everything, he wouldn't have given us the shrug emoji.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank Paul Bagala, Representative Parole, Paulina, and Tristan Harris. Club Random grabs every Monday on YouTube. A listener to 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

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