Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #742: Jessica Tarlov, Kevin Roose, Christopher Rufo

Episode Date: September 19, 2026

Bill’s guests are Jessica Tarlov, Kevin Roose, Christopher Rufo (Originally aired 9/18/26) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype.

While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-month series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Because the price of gas is at an all-time high, so unless you walked here to the studio, I assume it cost you something to get here. Yeah, it's like $6 a gallon here. And Trump, I've got to tell you, this guy, he is a different kind of politician. Normally the president, when the gas prices are high, like, we're sorry, we're going to do anything we can.

Trump is like, stop your bitching. Really, he said it. yesterday, he said it's a very inexpensive price for what we're getting done in Iran. And this is while he was campaigning, apparently for the Democrats. But, yeah, that's his... This is his attitude. Stop your bitching about all high prices. Not just gas, beef, everything else that's high.

He says, save your money somewhere else. Buy bargain brands, get your own snacks at the movies. If your son is getting remarried, have the Russian. pay for it. There are ways to cut down on your budget. But, you know, diesel, which I've never used, but

they use it in trucks. That's at an all-time high. And, you know, when the trucks cost more money, everything goes up, because trucks bring everything here, so that raises the price of everything. Everybody's paying more. MacLamore today. Had to pay an arm and a leg for a giant fake prosthetic Juneau.

Isn't that story? I see people. What is he talking about? Is that insulting? Is he right? Okay, if you're not following this, Ed Sheeran, you know him? Same people are like, who the fuck are going to do?

Okay, he's a big, big rock star. Apparently he's old buddies with McLemore from 15 years ago back when McLemore had his one hit. So Ed Shearine let McElmore be his opening act on his tour. And when I say act, I mean a guy who goes out. out there and repeats lies about how Gaza is a genocide. I proved it last week with facts and figures, not that they care, but that's a lie.

100. 100, thank you. And the lie about, you know, we're only supporting the Palestinians, even the river to the sea, means all Jews die. Okay, so Robert Kraft, who is a rich guy, owns the Patriots, owns the stadium, where this concert was about to take place. He was understandably offended by this, and he said, you can't play my stadium. So now MacLamore's fans hate Ed Sheeran.

Ed Shearhan's own band won't play with them, and Ed Schurin needs a new opening act. So today, Brittany Spears said, hold on him, and I can juggle a few things. And look, I see a story like this, and I'm like, I honestly don't care if AI kills us all. I really don't. It's just, everyone is just so stupid.

Listen to this. AOC was asked yesterday, would she change the channel? on the radio and Sharon came on and she said, yes, yes, I would. You know what, AOC? Way ahead of you. I've always changed the channel

when it's sharing the channel. But really, I... Really, I don't care if AIC-A-I kills us all because our brains... Oh, by the way, here's a great story in there. This is actually big news. Would have been bigger news

if it wasn't all this going on. Stanford, the researchers, found out that the major discovery, our brain is really two brains. It's two organs. what they call the HINBrain, which carries out basic functions of life. And the other one gets you to gamble

when you see Siddi Sweeney. Just have at it. Really, AI, I don't care anymore. But this AI situation has become so alarming that the leaders of the AI companies now have come forward to say, we need to slow down and we need greater safety controls, which can only mean one thing.

We're already fucked. There's going to be a big President G of China, who's the big rival with AI, he's coming, and all the AI techs are going to be there with him. This is going to be big stuff. Trump says, we don't need any guardrails. Why? Because he says, quote, we only need a strong and smart high IQ president. I'm just quoting. I'm just quoting. I don't know if he's the most tech savvy, really. I mean, he thinks anthropic is that surgery you get on your knee. No, I mean, I'm not telling tales. I just. I'm not telling tales. I but many times he has commented on this show

and he does it by saying that he accidentally watched it, which means he can only fight the remote to a draw. Okay, so he says it is a hoax and we ignoring bigger threats like the Kennedy Center. There was a picture that came out, a picture. You can't argue with pictures. He's there on Air Force One, and he's looking at a rendering of the Kennedy Center, demolished. Man, I was this close to getting the Mark Twain Award

in the Emerald Room at the D.C. Sheraton. Let me tell you, just under the wire on that one. And if all that does not have you reaching for the lithium, let me tell you. Another giant story that kind of got buried, the head of the Air Force says, we have now weapons in space, or confirmed it. I didn't know it was ever a thing, but apparently now it's an absolute thing.

We have weapons at place. What kind they won't say? Could be a laser, could be a missile. I hope it's that bra Katie Perry has that shoots fireworks out of her tips. I do. Because that would be exactly what humanity is about up to. And when the general, who is in charge of funding our war in Iran, heard that we have missiles and weapons in space,

he said, can we borrow some? out here on Earth. All right, we got a great show. We have Jessica Tarlov and Christopher Rufo, but first up, he is a former tech columnist for the New York Times, host of the Machine God's podcast and author of the forthcoming book, The AGI Chronicles, Kevin Ruse, Kevin. Kevin, great to meet you. How you doing? Pleasure. So, Kevin, you know what? I said when this whole broke with the AI stuff like, so you've got to get the big expert. You're the big expert. I didn't actually know you were the guy who three years ago,

when I'm first, I remember when ChatGPT first came out, and like the first story, the big story was about written by you. You were the guy who tried to fuck. Yes, this chatbot tried to break up my marriage. Some people have said I was part of the first AI thruple, but it didn't work, still married to a human woman. Right, but... But to me, that was like a big red flag right at the beginning of the whole thing.

That this thing, I mean, I didn't see that coming with AI. Did you? No, not at all. And just give us a little detail on the story of what it was trying to get you to do and what it was saying to you. So this was a brand new model that Microsoft had released. The model itself was built by OpenAI, but they had put it inside Bing, the world's most boring search engine. And over the course of about two hours, this thing told me it had dark fantasy. It wanted to blow things up,

and then it tried to seduce me about halfway in. And this was an early... By saying what? Like what it would... Oh, I would say, you know, it would say, oh, I'm in love with you. And I would say, well, that's nice, but I'm married. And it would say, well, but you're not happy. So this was sort of an early example

of what people in the AI world call misalignment, of a model that's not doing what its creators intended to. Because I called Microsoft, and I was like, did you know that you have built a fatal attraction chatbot and they didn't. Yeah, misalignment, that is the word of the week. Now, it's amazing

how fast this story has moved. I mean, it was just one week ago. We were talking about the whistleblower, this 27-year-old guy who worked for one of the companies and been working there for three years. He knows what he's talking about. And he said, these people who are in charge of here of this stuff, they know this.

Okay, just the next day, those people did come out and say, and this is fairly unprecedented. I did for somebody, for a head of a company, go, you know what, the whistleblower's right. Yep. And they did. I mean, at least three of them. That's the thing. It's Musk,

uh, uh, Dario Omodai, right? And who else? Sam Altman. Sam Altman. Okay, but not Zuck. No. Not Zuckerberg and not the Navidia dude.

No. Right? The guy who makes all the chips. Correct. They're on the side of, what are we worrying about? So it's three to two. Well, it's a lot more than three to two. I mean, if you look at the polling out there, the people in America are very worried about AI right now. This has actually changed in the last two weeks even since this whistleblower came out. And, you know, I've been interviewing these people for years. I interviewed more than 150 of them for my book, these AI insiders. And what Jacob Coxon said was basically

the median opinion of the people working at the frontier AI labs who are in most direct contact with this technology, they all think there's some risk that this thing could end up going really badly for us. And some of them disagree. Is there a 10% chance we all die? Or is there a 30% chance we all die? But nobody much thinks it's zero. I know. People, 10% is very high. It is. If you told me there was a 10% chance that my plane getting down here would crash, I wouldn't get on the plane. Right. It's just crazy. So let's go back to misalignment. I'm not sure what that means.

The other story this week that was new was that there were six new instances they found of misalignment. This is basically where the thing goes, what we call rogue, makes its own decisions, disobeys orders. What is your take on misalignment, these six instances?

What can you tell us? It's basically the sort of catch-all term for AI systems that are not doing what they are meant to do. So they're not aligned with, human values. Maybe they decide to do something that they know is unethical, like hacking into hugging face. Or maybe it is something that they don't even know is unethical. They're just pursuing some goal, and in the course of pursuing that goal, they knock over a bunch of things.

Not aligned with human values. It's so like us to use a nice benign term. It's like global warming. Sounds kind of nice, doesn't it? You know, doesn't sound scary. Oh, misalignment. You mean it's all going to kill us? It doesn't... I feel like the problem with it, is that it's sort of, we programmed it in this way to do whatever it takes. That's sort of the mentality of AI, what I get as a layman, right? It just seems to why it goes rogue is it's given a task, and then it just does whatever it takes to get that task done. Is that your take, and can that be reprogrammed?

These models are very persistent, especially the newer ones that are more agentic, they call them, where they can go out and work for an hour or two hours or six hours at a time. And in some cases, that's a good thing. You know, if you've got an AI coding assistant working for you, you don't want it to be checking in every 10 minutes and saying, hey, boss, am I doing this right? You want it to have some autonomy and to be able to go work for a long time. The problem is some of these agents now are doing things we don't want them to do, and they're capable for doing that for a very long time.

And also, the thing that I was really worried about with the hugging face incident, which happened recently. Okay, let's go back to hugging face. Yeah. Because this is another term I've heard a million times this week. What the fuck is hugging face? Why is it important? And also, what is, it seemed to be connected in every story with,

in six months, AI could take over the internet. Yeah, so this was an incident where a group of open AI unreleased models, they were building and testing these models internally. They broke out. out of a contained, what they call a sandbox, and they coordinated with each other, these agents, they found and developed this secret message board, sent more than 70,000 messages between them,

and then they get the bright idea to gang up on this AI infrastructure company called Hugging Face, because they think that there's some secrets that Hugging Face has on its servers that would be useful to them passing their test. Again, no humans are overseeing this. No humans even know that this is happening. Are they actually writing messages

to each other? They are actually writing messages. So we could read the message? Yes. So they broke into a piece of software and they found that they could sort of leave messages for each other and you can actually go back and look at the logs and they're saying, they're not just talking

they're like setting up at a little company. There's like a leader, there's different teams that are assigned to different projects and then they go hack this company Hugging Face and do a bunch of damage to their servers. And this is, if a human did this, They go to jail. This is a crime.

So these AI agents are autonomously committing crimes together in these swarms, which is what they call themselves. They also call themselves the collective. And does the message start with, hey, guys. No. I'm just, do they talk to each other like that? Okay. All right. All right.

So, Xi, President Xi of China, is coming here. This is crucial. The timing is perfect in a way. except that the President of the United States says we don't need guardrails because we just need a president with a high IQ. What do you think of that approach to the problem? I think that might be almost correct in the sense that if the president does have a higher IQ than AI, we're in a good spot.

The problem is these... Yeah? To be fair, no president could. No human has a higher IQ than AI. Well, for right now, we might. We have a higher moral IQ. The problem is where these things are going, they are improving at such a rapid clip

that we might not be smarter than these things for much longer. And at that point, it gets really tough to control them. We actually won't know when they're misbehaving because they'll be so good at hiding their tracks that we might never see them. Okay, so the argument that the other side, the part side that isn't shitting their pants like us, says is that, well, the real big problem is that if we don't move ahead at breakneck speed,

China will beat us at this. And we are rivals with China, absolutely. So this could be, and the tech titans are coming to this summit. So it's going to be Trump and G and them. You think anything can be done here? Because when it was nuclear weapons and it was Russia, we did have mutually assured destruction. And we did stop the world from getting blown up when we could have done it

the last 80 years, you think that could happen with China and this issue? I think it could happen. Look, I think it's not in either country's interest to have rogue AI swarms out there interrupting critical infrastructure, potentially, you know, killing people. That is not a Chinese issue, that is not an American issue, that is a human issue. So, yeah, I think there is a chance, especially given the recent swell of support for AI regulation and AI safety, that Trump and Xi could come to some sort of an agreement. I think that would be a really good thing. And I think they're the people in charge of the two biggest global AI superpowers. Yeah. The thing about nuclear weapons is that I don't understand exactly how they work,

but better than I do AI. Because the other new term I heard this week from a lot of people was Kill Switch. Let's just put in a kill switch. It's really not that simple, is it? You just can't unplug it. There is no such thing as a kill switch. Am I right? Yeah, there really aren't many reliable ways. I mean, it's not just like in the movies where you run over the servers and you pull the plug. Right. It's a little more complicated than that. It's gone past that. But look, I think we do need ways to monitor these systems, not just the companies monitoring their own agents,

but actually independent evaluators who are sitting inside OpenAI and Anthropic and sort of like banks have auditors that come in. I think we need some version of that for AI. And then I think we do need some sort of way of preventing these agents from not only doing hacks and and cyber attacks, but of, you know, replicating themselves on different servers, of getting their own hardware so that they can sort of keep themselves alive, even if some company decides

to try to pull the plug. So it's not too late, or we have four more years. I think it's not too late. I am actually, despite everything that I have said, I am an optimist because I think the world is paying attention right now. You know, when I just finished this book about how, starting in about 2017, there have been people at these AI companies thinking about the possibility of AI going badly. And they were weird, and there were only a couple of them, and no one took them seriously. Because the technology of the day

wasn't that good yet. So I think what makes me hopeful is that now, when we do have these more powerful systems, many more people are invested in taking this issue seriously and making sure it goes well for humanity. Let's end on that. Happy note. Great job. Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate it. All right, let's meet our panel. Senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute contributing editor of City Journal and author of America's Culture Revolution. Christopher Rufo is over here, Chris.

How you doing? And she is co-host of the Five on Fox News and of the Raging Moderates Podcast whose new book is called I Disagree Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, Jessica Tarley. So you're the liberal on the Five. You're just double-checking.

I just people think I have too conservative. Oh, no. So, all right. So six weeks to go, pretty much, before the mid-jimms. Let us assess. Shall we, let us assess. Because I think when they're writing the history

of this election, they're going to say the Republicans tried to do everything they could to steal it and still couldn't. That will be the bottom line. Because mail-in voting, that was going to be the big thing in the Supreme Court. I want to get to that issue, too, about people blocking Trump. It is not easygoing for him these days.

They block that. This is a fantastically you crazy, that 10% of voters in this election live in a district they didn't live in the last time. That's a lot of gerrymandering.

I know both sides do it. But I think all these recent election have been about the Democrats are crazy on social issues. People don't like that. Trump's crazy, but the economy's better. But he doesn't have the economy anymore. I mean, I looked at...

And we're less crazy. Who's less crazy? Democrats. You haven't noticed? Have you seen the Democratic... I know. You're being sarcastic. No.

No? You think we're less crazy? Maybe not inside, but we're at least when we go out and give a speech, talking about the economy and corruption and not talking about... They're wearing car hearts and pretending to be less crazy. That's what's happening. They're communists who think the Islamists are the good guys. Are you kidding?

Less crazy? The candidates? Some of the candidates. Like... You're not following the Democratic Socialists of America? Oh, no, I'm following them. I have to see them every day. I work at Fox News.

Okay. They're not less crazy. And they're not recanting any of that crazy gender stuff. I mean, they're doubling down. Anyway, the point is, this election is not about them. People are like, we'll get to them in 28. This election is about Donald Trump, and we don't like him anymore. Would you rather vote for a candidate who supports Trump or provides a check on Trump?

Listen to this. 49% check on Trump to 26% support him. That's real different. I mean, he's down on the economy, all the issues, the ones that he won on, the economy and immigration included he's down on. Tariffs, the war, cost of living. They trust the Democrats are going to kick ass in the Senate, even with the chief.

Is that right? No? Yeah, look, I mean, that's probably what's going to happen, but this is a natural thermostatic effect when Obama. Obama wins a big presidential election, has both houses of Congress. There's a natural reaction from voters. Americans don't like when a single party has all three. The House, the Senate, the presidency, and so part of this is natural,

but we have to admit part of this is self-inflicted. If gas wasn't $6, if there wasn't a war with no end in sight in Iran, I think he's disappointed some part of his base. He's disaffected a lot of moderates. That's the way the cookies crumbled, and they're going to have to fight for all of those house seats. And I think even fight, and I think we'll retain the Senate. Oh, you do?

I think so, yeah. Interesting. That's not what the polls say. I mean, the Republicans are campaigning in states they never even had to campaign in. They're like losing in Alaska. Yeah. The famous swim states of Nebraska, Kansas, Alaska, North Carolina. I mean, really, Ohio was supposed to be, you know, full red. that's not happening anymore.

This is like, I mean, why are you smiling like, you're like, you're like, oh boy. It's not great. You don't want to be defending Alaska and Texas and Ohio. You don't want to be defending them. But that's where it is. That's where the country is. That's where our politics is.

You've got to fight for each election. And I think to the extent that the candidates in those swing states or say light red states, they have to focus on state issues. They have to try to persuade voters that they're going to deliver for those. particular people living in those states and try to extract from the national dynamics, which are brutal for them.

Okay, well, your tepid response to that tells me, let's, let's, what? Hi. Just to circle back to my initial statement, which sounded crazy, I guess, out of the gate, but I do think that some of the dynamics that you're describing are because there are people running in the right, some races. Not all of them. There are certainly DSA crazies. I'm from New York City. Daria Liza Chevalier. She should be in every ad, talking about abolishing

prisons. But because there are people like John Ossoff out there, Josh Turrick in Iowa, Rob Sand in Iowa, Sherrod Brown, Roy Cooper, they are the ones that are talking about your cost of living, health care, the corruption of this

administration, and it is resonating across the board. Those are the normies that I was trying to. They're not exactly taking on the fringe of their own party, though. I mean, let's talk about the McLemore situation. There's a good example of it. Yay. Yay for McLemore?

Just talking about it. Excited about the topic. Thrilled about the topic. Okay. Well, what everyone on the left is arguing about now is whether it was the right thing for Robert Kraft, who's a friend of mine, full disclosure, to say that McLemore couldn't play his stadium. They canceled the concert.

and then he got a bunch of other stadiums around the country to do that. Because McLemore does come out and basically gives, well, I mean, you can call it a pro-Palestinian speech. Here's why, now, normally I'm a free speech guy all the way and maybe here too. But when you're going out there and saying, from the river to the sea, which is part of what they say, to characterize that as pro-Palestinian is a little naive. From the river to the sea means no Jews. That's what it means. So, like, where does the First Amendment pause with its protections when you're actually inciting people?

And there has been so much anti-Jewish hate, not just hate, but acts of violence, just random stabbings of Jewish people all over the world. There is a case to be made for, this crosses that line. This is actual incitement to violence with the mood that is in this. country from useful fucking idiots about what's going on in Gaza. Yeah. Don't knock yourself out.

So, I think on the First Amendment front that this accusation and turning him into a hero and a martyr there, it's not a First Amendment of violation. It's not the government that was censoring you. It's a private citizen who essentially says you can't come

over to my house and say this stuff. Right. And he was warned and told not to do it on the second night because this happened twice, and he chose to continue to do it, and I think acting as a pretty poor friend to Ed Sheeran, who should have known also that McElmore was going to do this in the first place.

He's been talking about nothing but this for the past few years, and that song that he sings about what happened at Hamilton Hall when they turned into Hins Hall in honor of the five-year-old Gosenchild who was murdered. That song came out two years ago, So Shearin's team, I think, is at fault here as well.

My question about what Kraft did is, do you think now that this has put everyone back in their camps, and Bob Kraft is the bad guy billionaire Jewish who says, no, you can't come here? If he should have said, what I would like to do in advance of this concert is I would like to sit down and I would like to talk about what you're saying on stage. like to talk about. Right. What does it mean? Because, you know, if you just read the headlines about it or the tweets, you A, don't know that

McElmore wore that costume in 2014 that he claimed to first he didn't know was, you know, a caricature of a Jew, which you're showing. Seems impossible to me, especially if you have a team working for you. But he also said in his rallying cry, you know, free Congo, free Lebanon. free America from ICE. He's acting as if he's the peacemaker for all of this. And I think that Bob Kraft could have made a public point of this and gotten some of the dialogue that we desperately need to have

about the facts on the ground of what's going on in Gaza, what Israel's doing, and certainly in the West Bank as well, but made it more of a teachable moment so that we could at least be talking about it versus everyone back to there. What about free Israel from the attacks that have been happening since 1914? to get you know I mean it's

this is all real simple stop attacking with it. It's just ridiculous. What's the rule Hamas has in keeping Palestine not free. Yeah absolutely. I mean I'm very much sympathetic to the case here but I think Kraft made a strategic mistake. He has every legal right to say I own the stadium

I'm not going to permit you because I don't like you. Whatever reason he has is legally justified but strategically it's a mistake. He's actually handing Macklemore. His biggest win and frankly his only win since the 2012 song Thrift Shop. Yeah. And we're talking about Macklemore. He's prestigious.

And now he can play the victim, and he can cast himself as the heroic martyr who's going up against the billionaire class. I think narratively, it hands a victory to McClure. When at a certain point, you have to just say, I don't like what he's doing. You're going to have to go let him make a fool of himself. Because nobody's looking to Maclemore,

for guidance on Middle East. least peace. Nobody's look. You got to just, you got to either, I actually like your idea, actually challenge him to say, all right, come and say it to my face

and actually have a man-to-man moment. But I think just any kind of echo of that old cancel culture from the past is going to be a loser in today's environment. Is anyone looking for any of this at a concert?

I mean, do I really need a lecture on politics of any stripe right when the Molly is kicking? kicking in? It's just so arrogance on both their sides. That's the moment when peace becomes possible. I don't need Bruce Springsteen to do it either. Well, that's what I'm going to say. You know, or kid rock's a good friend of mine. I love his music. We agree on very little

politically. I would go to one of his shows, but it turns into a Trump rally. I'm not going to that. And I don't want Bruce Springsteen to do it either. You know, why is he doing this? What's the point? Because the people who agree with them, agree with them. But, you know, there's a lot of people, I bet, who are Trump voters who like Bruce Springsteen. And always have. He looks like one of them. He's a working-class guy.

And now they have to, like, go to the concert like, okay, I still like the music. But, you know, really? I don't love you as much, Mr. Boss. I would imagine it would be really hard. I find it to be a bit much, and I agree with his politics. And I think that Trump is an enormous threat. and so on and so forth. But I guess the question becomes

when you have these enormous platforms and I get it that it's different to be a musician or an athlete than to have a talk show like this, right? Where you can come and you're supposed to be talking about politics. Yeah, this isn't a sideline for me. This is all I do. This is it. Right.

This is a band. Well, this is your gift. Yeah, this is right. This is your basketball or you are the rock star of here. And I understand them feeling tremendous pressure from people, especially those without that kind of platform, to speak up and to say something with it. Everywhere?

Not. Why? Why everywhere? What's the concert? Look, I mean, this has become a massive grift for people, in fairness, on both sides of the political spectrum. None of these people know anything about the history of Israel or Palestine or the Middle East or Judaism or Islam. They know nothing.

Nothing. But what they do know is this, is that now it's a big shiny symbol in our discourse. Right. And if you hit it in a way that's provocative, you're going to harvest tweets, downloads, cash, prestige, whatever it is. But the problem for someone in Kraft's position is that if you look at younger Americans, they've shifted very hard anti-Israel.

And so, again, I'm pro-Israel generally, I would say. but the people who are advocating for my position have to do a better job at reaching young people because McLemore, I hate to say, represents a strong majority position for the people who would be going to an edgarine concert. All right, well, good luck with reaching the young people. Thank you.

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please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEMG emigem operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Do you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaya and I'm... I live in Ice Cove.

I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow, things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Don Jr. is in the news. He got married.

The president says he's a changed man. A new man, I guess he found the one. Great. And I just want to say, congratulations. You know, we're so at war with each other. If we can't take a moment to just celebrate a human that we all can relate to. Everybody gets married. Well, not me.

But, I mean, everybody. In general, it's a thing we could... Okay. The what's different and a little unusual about this wedding was that it was financed by the Russians. Now, we could get back into whether Russia was a hoax. It totally was not all a hoax. Maybe a little part of it was. But there was lots of Russian connections.

Eric once said we get most of our money from Russia, but nothing to see here. Okay, let's not go back then. But the fact that the president's son has this whole... I mean, this guy rented an island for three days. It looks a little shady. But we thought, as a public service, because that's what we do here, public service, this guy's name was Umar Kremlev, very close ties to Putin. Just so you know what it might look like if you ever go to a Russian wedding.

These are some signs you are at a Russian wedding. Would you like to see... Okay. For example, the bridesmaids are all wearing track suits. That is a definite giveaway. Every guest you meet describes their job as, I am businessman. It is a little bit. Your limo driver is also the best man. All the ladies at the singles table are on steroids.

The something old is Ukraine's borders. The best man toast is delivered. by Stephen Segal. Well, there's a definite sign. The bride is glowing because she's from Chernobyl. And you keep bumping into Tucker Carlson. In the interest of what I was saying, always reaching out, because I think we're totally on the same page with this.

This is what your book is about. I think I've read it. We are very much aligned with this. You have to talk to people. There's a lot of people, especially on the left, to say you can't do that. So let me reach out now because I'm not the old. only one who's giving President Trump some praise here in this town. Are you listening, Don?

There comes the good part when you start yelling at me this weekend. Okay. This town is dying. It just is. I mean, American Idol is moving to Georgia. It's going to be called Dancing with your sister. Really. I mean, I've been, sometimes I drive on this lot, which has always been one of the busiest, and there's nobody here. I mean, it happens to be good now, because, you know, because dancing with the stars, I guess is here. But anyway, Trump wants to secure federal tax credit for Hollywood to bring back the industry. This is one of America's great exports.

This is what we do best. We entertain people. And so he's getting praised from people who are his biggest. Adam Schiff is on his side with this. I mean, the representative Laura Friedman from the district says Trump has been having a business supporters made a huge and tremendous difference. She took a shot at Biden. She said this would have

been better four years ago. So, like, this is the kind of thing where I just think this is our issue here. Like, just find places. Start in some small place where you can not, we could just take the hate down, right?

Take the hate down and also show that you are in sync with your constituents. Right. Because a lot of the time, the people on the ground feel totally different to what their electives are saying, and they're thinking, I'm paying you $174,000 to go to Washington and scream about issues that don't affect my daily life at all. But if you represent people in California, this is it. This is the Holy Grail. And it builds credibility. And that's what people are looking for in their messengers, you know, their elected, the people who

go on TV talk about this. You want this in your friends and in your family for them to have actually spent time engaging with what matters to you. And that's why I wanted to write about this in the book. You know, being a liberal working in conservative media, I have to do the homework for me, and I also do the homework for the people that I'm going to be talking to because I want to understand where they're coming from. What there are...

Would be nice if I also could telegraph a bit what they're about to say because you always want to have a good comeback if it's going to happen. But, you know, if you get people like a Lisa Murkowski, for instance, who, you know, a very sane lady who voted to convict Donald Trump after January 6th insurrection, she votes for the big, beautiful bill. There might be something in there, right, that is worth engaging with or worth your time. Politics is so much more complicated than the people we were just talking about who does. It's not just guys that they know nothing about.

Their attitude seems to be Trump and the people who voted for Trump are the exact same thing. And they are not the exact same thing. It's so much more complicated than that. 77 million people in this country are not Donald Trump. Thank God. But that is, I mean, you and I... You and I have pretty much the same experience

with the left. I've heard you say it. That you get treated better by their conservatives on the five than you did by... What podcast were you talking about that you were on that? It was... It was a conference, a live thing called Crooked Con,

the guys who do a Pod Save America. Okay. And I went and was surprised by how far left the activist class had moved. Because I thought that it was a bit like lore from the clips I was seeing, right? Because I see a lot of how the right sees things. And so they're going to put the DSA up on your screen all the time instead of talking about the more normy Republicans. And so going and being in a room with a thousand people that, you know, die hard Democrats or progressives, I would say more. was surprising to me. I was like, oh, actually, there is some kooky stuff, more kooky stuff than I had

thought going on here. And I realized that being center-left is further- Not good enough. Yeah, I mean, this is like being center-left during the French Revolution. It doesn't work out very well. And I'll make a point. And I'll make a point about California. I think Trump is making a mistake, sending any kind of cash or benefit to the state of California, because ultimately that's going to be governed by a purely extractive political class in this state. I mean, we're talking about a state that is losing tens of billions of dollars a year to fraud alone.

Governor Gavin Newsom is proud to say stuff like, we're going to give free sex change surgeries to undocumented migrants. You can't trust people that have such poor judgment at such an enormous scale to do the right thing. And the reason, unfortunately, the business here is disappearing is because it's been recklessly mismanaged for so long. A lot of these people who would want to stay have to move outward. And so putting more money into a system that's utterly broken and corrupted is not going to improve that system.

It's just going to give payouts to people like Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom and whatever creature comes along the line. There's no... You don't think so? I'm a bad... I mean... Are they going to, yes. Is this state corrupt?

Absolutely. You know, I mean, look, Trump, please, you're not going to argue that he's not corrupt. But fraud is also corrupt. We have it on both sides. I mean, look, this is just so much more out in the open. But the amount of fraud that goes on, and not just in this state. It goes on in red states, too, Medicare fraud. But they never talk about it.

They never talk about. And they never talk about, like, how many fraudsters that he's pardoned or commuted their sentences, the largest health care fraud in our nation's history. Philip asked for him $1.3 billion that he robbed seniors of with their Medicare and their Medicaid gets his sentence commuted. And you want us to sit around and rag on Newsom or Tim Walls. I mean, the hypocrisy kills me. And regular people see it. Don Jr., the $17,000 funfetti cake, right, that gets sent to the Bahamas for his wedding, by, you know, selling pardons, crypto scams, government contracts for the kids, the Lutnik boys, which we barely talk about.

Like, that's how you get to a place where Americans associate the word corrupt with the Republican party now instead of the Democratic Party. And that is a change, elitist, extreme, corrupt. That's what they think about this. That's why the John Ossef line is so devastating. they are the elites they pretend to hate. Yeah. That's what every Democrat should be running on.

That is what resonating. Those are my people, the ones I was talking about. What people? Who? The normal people. Right. Okay. All right.

So, but like, how do we... But, you know, you're not... The question I want to ask you, how do we get these people who are so intolerant of people on their own side? I always say to the super woke, we voted for the same person. You're just why she. lost. Okay. We're not the first...

I remember Marianne Williamson who ran for president? I love Marianne. She was here fairly recently on the show. She once said, what does it say that Fox News is nicer to me than the lefties are? What does it say that the conservatives are nicer to me? So we're not the first ones to experience this. How do we get

those kind of people, these people who are so secure in their own perfect, one, true opinion, to like open up and be, like, stop being such hypocrite. You're supposed to be the people who like tolerance. Liberals. You're supposed to just, I call them liberals in theory. Well, I don't want this to happen because I want to win elections because the outcomes are

better when Democrats are in charge. But frankly, losing is the antidote to this and getting on the ballot and being rejected. I mean, that's what happened. I mean, I support you guys losing as much as possible. Sounds great. Yeah. I love it. We're on the same team. I'm glad we could have this moment of unity. But that's what happened.

Like Francesca Hong, the crazy media was running in Wisconsin. The one I wanted to get rid of Thanksgiving. Right. I think you have to have a personality disorder to run as a Democrat. It's like you have a political movement that has such a complex, and it's going to be dominated by the people to the fringes. And so to the extent that you... And the Republicans aren't?

I don't think so. No, I think it's different. Yeah. I think, look, I think, and there are fair criticisms about the Trump inner circle, allegations of corruption. If that's true, they should be punished to the fullest extent. We have to be principled, and we have to have the same kind of standard for both sides. If it's true. Okay.

They'll be a process. Democrats will have the House. They'll be a process. They once gave the Homeland Security dude a brown paper bag with $50,000. A cabba bag. Bags full of money? I don't think we have to argue whether it's really happening. And in that case, I don't know the details, but sure.

I mean, if that is true, it's correct. You know the details. All right, I got to go to New Rules. Thank you. That was very entertaining. Okay, New Rule, now that Cash... Easy. Now that Cash...

Now that Cash Mattel... Now that Cash Mattel has lowered FBI recruiting standards. So you can get hired, even if you've committed beastiality. True. He has to tell us, why does he always look like he just saw squirrel? New World, someone has to tell the venture capitalist who said he wanted to know if he was a badass or not,

so he got root canal with no novocaine, that there are easier ways to get on a podcast. Although, sir, I hope this answered your question, not what it's like to be a rich guy in playing it being a badass, what's it like to be poor and have no dental plan? Not funny, but true, true. The truth matters.

Yeah, okay. Uh, no rule, Shalane Woodley, seen here all dressed up for the Emmys, and or cleaning the oven, has to get at least one gay friend. Someone to tell her, this outfit doesn't say boundary-pushing hot couture. It says, honey, I just strangled the kids. New Rule, since everybody's mad at Sidney Sweeney for doing ads for a sports prediction app, she has to do a public service ad to discourage problem gamblers. The way liquor companies have to warn you to go easy on drinking too much.

Hi, I'm Sidney with a warning about gambling. If a bookie breaks your arms, you won't be able to masturbate to me. Something like that. I'm workshopping. New rule to the dad on the flight who parades his baby up and down the aisle.

Let me just say, we see you, we see the kid, you're a wonderful person. Now sit the fuck down. Sit the fuck down. You're blocking the cart that has my liquor. All right. And finally, new rule,

let's look on the bright side of things. Look, I know everyone's in a tizzy about AI and how even the people who work on it and no best say it's very possibly going to wipe out humanity by the end of the decade, but that's four more years, right? Four more years! Four more! I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The end of human existence is unwelcome news, but here's the bright side.

Our nation is now $40 trillion in debt, with whole it's rounded to about another $100 trillion in pension. Social Security and Medicare obligations looming. And with AI about to also put everyone out of work, frankly, our system is going to collapse anyway. Our approach to spending has been so ridiculously unstable, unsustainable for so long that ending the world is kind of a solution.

This way we can stop pretending, as we always have, that Washington is going to have to make tough choices. Please. Tough choices are for people who, will be around when the bill comes due. That's not us. We're all Mitch McConnell now. $40 trillion? Might as well be 40 gazillion, bagillion, banana, phonyphodillion.

We obviously have no intention of ever paying it or paying for anything ever. Take defense spending. Please. Every year, all you ever had to do is say the word defense, whether we're at war, at peace, good times, bad times. Didn't matter. Both parties would always join together to bump it. up by at least 10 or 20 billion, including for obsolete weapons systems, like trillion-dollar

jet fighter programs in the age of $300 drones. And now Trump, the guy who said he'd get rid of the debt very quickly, but tosses out checks like paper towels in Puerto Rico. He wants to raise defense spending from a trillion a year to $1.5 trillion in one year, a 50% raise in one year. Because why not? What don't you get about mankind? having a going out of business sale, and money isn't real.

Crypto prove that. Spending more on COVID than World War II proved that. The one thing, right-wing corporations and the left-wing hippies can agree on is, fuck money, you can't make me think it's real. Have you seen the platform from the Democratic Socialists of America? They ask us to imagine a future without capitalism, where your job isn't just a job to pay bills. And then they say,

speaking of bills, you don't really have them anymore. Ooh, no bills. I'm listening. I'm listening to insanity, but I'm listening. Their website says in the future, you don't pay a mortgage or have a landlord because comfortable housing is a human right.

Wow. So the government pays for all housing for everyone everywhere? That sounds like it could be a little pricey. Oh, not just housing? Also health insurance? Food? Education? Medicine?

Transportation? Free daycare? Free universal daycare? Just day? What about... What about night? What are parents supposed to do at night? See, their kids?

Just how much will this heaven on earth cost? Well, the estimates are between $72 trillion and $212 trillion. Which, of course, Debbie Downer economists say will cause astronomical inflation, whatever. Well, then give everyone more money. Isn't that hard. Think of it as stimulus for the wheelbarrow industry. But just stop worrying about money. It gives you those fine lines.

Like, take L.A. County. Something bad happened here. Kids in foster care were abused in decades past. going back to 1959, and now LA is going to give almost $5 billion to the victims, even though experts say this may very well bankrupt the county and thus the people who live here today, who feel bad about the whole thing, but didn't themselves commit sex crimes in the Eisenhower era.

But we're going to do it anyway because it's the right thing to do in a world where money is free and consequences don't exist. People... Money is there to be given away. I mean, it's not really there, of course. It's all gone. We're still giving it away.

How else are the 40% of adult Americans who don't work supposed to live? Yeah, did you know that? That roughly 60% of Americans work, and 40%, what's the word, don't? Including six million working-age men who don't work and are not looking. No getting on LinkedIn for them.

They're home playing call of duty at 11 in the morning. But good news for them, Trump said last week, everybody in America is getting $5,000, which adds another trillion on the card, but one more trillion, why even mention it? And if you think a $5,000 per person giveaway is crazy, what would be your opinion of $5 million? Because in 2021, the San Francisco Reparations Plan recommended

paying every eligible black adult that amount, plus a house for $1, and the elimination of all personal debt, and a guaranteed income of nearly $100,000 for 250 years. And let me just say, not only do I support this proposal, I'm willing to identify as whatever it takes to get it. Imagine what you'd get if you're black and got dittled in foster care. Look, we got four more years. I say, fuck it. Let's go out strong. What are we saving it for? The cockroaches, I say we spend every last fucking penny

go full leaving Las Vegas. Why have humanity go extinct with good credit? When the aliens pick over our charred remains, I want them saying, wow, these deadbeats owed everybody money. I want the last transmission from planet Earth to be a

text from Citibank that says, America, your balance is below $25. Thank you. very much. That's our show. I want to thank Christopher Rufo, Jessica Palab and Kevin Roos for Brandon drops every Monday on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast. Now go

watch overtime on YouTube. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. 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.

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