Real Time with Bill Maher - Episode #392 (Originally aired 06/17/16)
Episode Date: June 18, 2016Episode #392 (Originally aired 06/17/16) - Bill’s guests are Rebecca Traister, Ravi Patel, Josh Barro, Emily Miller and Lawrence Wilkerson. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn... more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome to an HBO
podcast from the HBO late-night series
Real Time with Bill Maher.
Thank you. Thank you.
I think I know why you're
cheerful tonight.
It took a full year.
But Donald Trump is catering in the polls.
He is...
Did I say catering?
Cratering is what I meant to say.
He's also catering.
He's got a business on the side.
Trump steaks, they're going like hotcakes, which he's also selling over here.
No, he's cratering.
Was it something he said?
Don't ask me to explain Americans, really.
I mean, he has been saying crazy, offensive shit for a full year, and now they go,
hey, wait a minute.
This guy, there's something a little off about this guy.
He is setting records for political unpopularity.
70% of Americans now have an unfavorable opinion.
of Donald Trump.
That's up 10 points
in a month.
His favorable rating is only
29%. That's historically
low. He's got 77%
unfavorable with women.
They view of negligent. Eighty-nine percent
unfavorable. Big surprise with Latinos.
94%
unfavorable with black folks.
Okay, but
Trump
never changes. Today he tweeted,
People who hate me love me.
No, they don't.
His campaign has blood coming out of its whatever.
No, really.
I mean, no one even wants to be his vice president.
The only people who will say yes,
Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie.
That's what they're talking about.
I think Christie would be great.
First of all, he would shatter the glass floor.
He's a heavy man.
No, but the Republicans are having real buyer's remorse about this Donald Trump.
It's like buying a monkey, you know?
Everybody thinks it sounds fun to have a monkey,
and then you get it home and starts throwing poop and tears your face off.
So listen to this.
The Republican power brokers are now considering putting in a conscience clause at the...
You're right, sir. That is kind of funny in itself.
You know, at the convention, which would unbind the delegates and allow them to vote for someone else,
this is new for the Republicans, trying to keep white people's votes from counting.
But speaking of the conventions, what a good time to announce that real-time
will be on not just Friday convention week, but Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Thank you, yes. Thank you, HBO.
That's right.
We're going to be on.
at 11 o'clock, that's what it should end, or 8 o'clock,
whatever time zone you're in.
But, yes, we will be covering the convention
because it is going to be a category 5 shitstorm.
Oh, at the Republican convention, there will be blood.
When they try to take it away from Donald Trump,
because his supporters watch a lot of professional wrestling,
and conventions have a lot of folding chairs.
You do the bank.
But to be fair, we want to be fair.
We will also be doing the Democratic convention.
We will also be on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for that.
And we will cover it when the Bernie people and the Hillary people throw kale at each other.
Because that's not quite as violent, but...
No.
No, the Republican convention is going to be the fun one,
because already they're losing all their corporate sponsors
because it's Donald Trump, Coca-Cola, Microscoff,
they pulled back.
Today we found that Walgreens, Ford, Motorola, UPS, Wells Fargo.
All pulling out.
You know, the only one they have left, X-Lax.
Ex-Lax.
For when you just want to get this shit over with.
That's no slugly, right?
No, you know what?
Trump, he blew it.
This week, we had a national tragedy,
and everybody in politics, their response,
as always, completely predictable.
Republicans talked about radical Islam,
Democrats talked about gun control.
Trump talked about himself.
And did you see the shooter?
I mean, the shooter said the punishment,
he said that what he did was punishment
for the filthy ways of the West.
You know, I just want to say to all my friends,
gay, straightened in between,
get your filthy on.
You know what?
Get your filthy on.
You can have our filthy Western ways
when you pry them from our cold dead hands.
Filthy ways of the West.
That should be California's new motto.
When you come in across the border from Nevada,
welcome to California,
home of the filthiest ways in the West.
I mean, and did you see the pictures
of the shooter and his family at Disneyland?
Okay, one, they seem to be enjoying the West,
just fine that day.
And two, where was that alligator when we needed it?
All right, we got a great show, Emily Miller,
just Barrow and Colonel Lawrence.
We'll consider her here a little bit speaking with writer-director,
Ruby Patel.
But first up, she's the author of all the single ladies,
unmarried women, and the rise of an independent nation,
and a writer at large for New York Magazine.
His recent cover story is Hillary Clinton versus herself.
Rebecca Traster.
Hi, Rebecca.
Boy, you have a long intro.
How you doing?
I'm great. I'm happy to be here.
Oh, I'm happy to have you.
All right. So single women, I understand, are going to be the key voting block in this election.
They are.
That's interesting because in past elections, we heard they don't vote enough.
They were the key voting block in 2012 as well.
They were 23% of the electorate, so almost a quarter of the electorate.
And they voted for Barack Obama by a kind of staggering margin, 67 to 31%.
And by many men...
By many measures,
by many measures,
they are responsible for Barack Obama
getting reelected. And I have this sneaking
suspicion that the margin might be
wider when it comes to choosing between
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Yeah, but you know who doesn't like Hillary? White women.
Among white women,
Hillary and Trump are tied.
What is that? White women,
let's see. Woman, woman-hater.
Well, interestingly...
Woman-hater, I...
Though, interestingly, amongst white single women,
Single women. Single white women vote Democratic as well.
So marriage is the problem.
I've always said that.
Married white women are your problem.
Married white women are your problem.
They're not my problem.
Well, let's talk about marriage.
It's interesting the way things have changed.
When I was first doing a show in the 90s, you know,
I had to like stick up for the idea of being single as normal.
You're not a weird person if you don't get married.
And now, whenever I tell people, I've never been married, they're like, good for you.
How'd you do it, man?
I mean, it's like a badge of honor.
There are now more unmarried people in the United States by about a percentage point.
We are a single majority nation.
We are a single majority nation.
And it's not just some weird trend or quirk.
For women, especially, who historically have been economically dependent on men,
have been sexually dependent on men in eras when they couldn't control their reproduction through birth control or abortion,
have been dependent on men if they want to.
to have socially sanctioned families.
Right.
The fact that circumstances have changed and that now they can be earners, they can participate
in public and political life, they can have liberated sex lives, they can have families
without being married.
What that means, it displaces marriage as the organizing institution that organizes gendered
power, among other things.
And it creates all kinds of new paths for women.
It remaps women's adulthood in a way that is totally unprecedented and is discomforting.
to a lot of people.
Yes.
I mean, you said it beautifully.
What I would paraphrase that is,
a woman doesn't just have to marry a loser.
No, but that's a revolution.
No, it is a revolution.
Like, before you had to marry someone.
And now it's more like,
well, I'll marry somebody if somebody great comes along.
And if it doesn't, I'm okay with that.
It raises the bar on relationships.
And it raises the bar on men's behavior.
And, you know...
What is...
Yeah, okay.
So, yeah, I love that word you used.
You said they...
Women used to be hustled.
Yeah.
Hustled off to the highway of marriage.
Yeah, hustled down that aisle.
Right.
You just...
You were pushed.
And at the beginning of your adulthood,
because you were dependent,
because you had to establish a relationship
to the kind of American
who could be an earner
and who could provide you
with a socially-sanctioned sex life
and a family,
that had to kick off your adulthood
so that for hundreds of years, the median age,
as long as they kept track,
median age of first marriage for women,
fluctuated only between 20 and 22.
In 1990, it crept up over 23.9.
Today, it is over 27 and higher than that in many cities.
So even for those who are marrying,
they're doing it later and spending more years of their adulthood
outside of this institution that historically really confined them.
It's so interesting.
You know,
you're a little younger than me.
Now you're a lot younger than me.
Okay.
But who wasn't at this point?
Okay.
So, like, I graduated high school in 1974.
Okay, so I needed a summer job, you know.
You know what my summer job was?
I sold pots and pans, door to door.
And what they said was, look, get high school yearbooks,
find the women who are not going to college,
and knock on their door,
because they will be needing pots and pans.
Right, right?
This is...
I was a pretty good pots and pay.
I only lasted about three days.
I was like, what the fuck am I doing?
Really, I would rather give blow jobs behind the 7-Eleven
than do this job.
This is just...
Well, this is the difference, because if marriage
was the thing that kicked off your adult life and you were a woman,
you know what you were given?
Pots and pans.
Right.
And dishes.
And that was your life.
Your work, in fact, was to support
the public participation of your...
husband, the earning of your husband, by taking care of the family, doing the cooking,
keeping the house. That's part of how you enforced marriage as the organizing principle.
It's because if you had a population of wives dependent on these earners, they also then had
to do the labor that enabled the men to go out into the world and earn. And that was pots
and pans. That was babies.
But there are still Republican politicians who talk about that in nostalgic terms.
They talk about it obsessively. This is, this is dogma for Republican politicians. Mitt Romney gave
a speech at a graduation just a few years ago
where he urged everybody, you know what, go out there
and get married. But don't just get married.
Marry early.
This is Republicans
who push the idea that the so-called
success sequence, graduating
from college, graduating from high school
of college, getting married, and then having a child
is the cure for poverty
and everything else that ails America.
But it's also because they think if women are on their
own, it's going to be government's
job to support them more. That's a lot of
lot of what it is.
You know, we're going to have to...
Well, it is the government's job to support them more, as the government has supported
white men throughout our entire history.
The government enfranchised white men at the founding, protected it throughout while
disenfranchising people of color and women.
The government has built infrastructure that supported businesses that were owned by white
men who profited.
The government has depressed by not protecting wage equality, by not offering paid leave, has
depressed women's ability to participate in the workforce and compete against men for the money and the power,
and has left them as this population that needs to do the domestic work.
I'm just a pot and pen salesman. Don't yell at me.
I'm just trying to sell my pots and fans, okay?
All right. Well, thank you very much for coming. You're a great guest. I hope you join our panel sometime.
Rebecca, please. Thank you very much. Let's meet our panel.
Hey. Hi, everybody.
I'm just a pot and pans salesman.
He is the former chief of staff.
Wow, he's on our show to Colin Powell,
who is now distinguished visiting professor
at the College of William and Mary.
Oh, yes, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
One of my favorites is over there.
How you doing?
He is the senior political correspondent
for One American News,
and author of Emily gets her gun,
but Obama wants to take yours.
Emily Miller, thank you, Emily,
for being brave enough to come into the Lions Den.
We appreciate that.
He is the senior editor for Businesses,
insider and an MSNBC contributor, Josh Barrow.
Hey, Bill.
Barrow.
Barrow.
It's all right.
It's like, don't think of pink elephant, and then I fuck it up every time.
Remember to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.
Okay, let's start with the politics before we get into the heavy stuff, because it was a heavy week.
As I mentioned in the monologue, a real difference this week in the polling with Mr. Donald Trump.
Trump. Why now? I mean, it's been going on for a year. Why now? Why did it all kind of like start going south this week?
I think it's two things. I think we're seeing in this round of polls the Judge Curiel controversy. It turns out Americans don't like blatantly racist attacks on the judiciary that also signal that a president might use his power to support his own businesses and, you know, and defeat his political opponents through untoward things. And then the response to the shooting.
I think there had been this idea that if there was terrorism,
that would be good for Trump because people would be scared.
I thought that.
And then he said this totally unhinged stuff,
and it turned out that voters don't like that.
So maybe the public has better sense than we realized.
Well, you'll know a lot of, I think you all know,
a lot of conservatives don't put a lot of stock into some polls.
I'll tell you, my network did a poll.
2,000 people, mostly Democrats, post-Orlando,
and has them neck-in-neck.
But on the bigger picture on polls, we're going to see...
Well, we don't...
They're your polls?
We all have...
Yeah, we all have polls.
But in most polls, he did go down this week.
Okay, but bigger picture, you're going to see the candidates go up,
you're going to see them go down.
It's going to go on until September.
And during Republican convention, you're going to see Trump's numbers go up,
believe it or not.
During the Democrat convention, you're going to see Hillary's numbers go up.
It's all going to settle down when we can get into the debates in September and October.
That's when people start, that's when you'll start seeing the real numbers that matter.
Until then, it's just a horse race and a daily up and down.
Well, okay, that's a very charitable way to look at it.
All right.
That's not the way I see it.
I see it as this was the week it ended.
Okay.
No, no, no.
Stop, stop, stop.
And by the way, I don't think I'm not the only one,
because most of the Republicans who were caught on camera this week
basically said, I don't want to talk about it.
I mean, they dashed into the elevator.
What specifically do you think made Donald Trump just his whole campaign?
You know what?
I think it's selfishness.
The judge thing.
looked selfish.
There is no constituency for Trump University
except Donald Trump
and attacking the Mexican-American judge.
And then when he basically said
the first thing out of his mouth
after Orlando was, I was right,
I was right about terrorism.
He looks like what he is, a narcissist.
I think what you've said...
I think what you just said is
key from my perspective,
and by the way, I sold pots and pants too.
So I empathize me.
You did not.
Really?
Yeah.
Really?
Really?
Boy, was it tough?
It is tough, yes.
I think the, as Rich Armitage said the other day,
the Republican leadership is in a fog,
and I think they're in a fog primarily because of what you just said.
They realize now, incontrovertibly, they do not have a winning candidate,
and they don't know what to do about it.
That's it.
That's it.
Our old friends, I think you know that, Bill.
We worked the State Department together, and he is a loyal patronage.
but on this we completely disagree.
Absolutely.
All right.
That's fine.
It's fine.
I think Republicans, the Republican established it in D.C.,
their issue is not about,
the issue is that they don't control Donald Trump,
and you can talk to anybody, the RNC,
which I do on a daily basis,
and the leadership in the House and the Senate,
I do also on a daily basis.
They don't know Donald Trump.
They can't control him.
He doesn't use their pollsters.
He doesn't use their money guys.
Because he's not a politician.
And so that's why the elite and the establishment,
in Washington don't like Donald Trump.
But there's 14 million Americans out there.
That's one reason I think what I just said is operative,
because what we have is we have a man,
whether he intended it or not,
has caused a Republican Party in its present incarnation,
an objective with which I don't necessarily disagree,
to commit suicide.
The party is self-destructed.
And that's why I think this week they're looking for an out.
I think this week they are saying,
you know what, we have reserved the right
for a late-term abortion for Donald Trump.
Oh.
Because...
No.
And it might be bloody.
Oh, you guys.
We're not for abortion, but the life of the party is at stake.
Okay.
All right.
No one...
In cases where the...
You guys, this conversation is only happening in L.A. Hollywood, in New York, in D.C., in New York.
You people.
This is not happening in the rest of America.
But you saw those poll numbers that I was citing.
I mean...
Which are a little questionable I think.
Those are very high negatives.
You have to admit.
And it's poll after poll.
We don't want to debate.
It's only winning white people.
Only, okay.
Only winning. Are there enough white people?
There are 14,0005 million people who voted for Donald Trump.
In Republican primary within the bubble.
But they're not in D.C., New York, you people's world.
But they're also surrounded by other people in their state who are not Republican primary voters.
Mitt Romney got 62 million votes in 2012 and lost.
In general, just went out.
But I'm saying, like the 13 million people who went out to vote for Donald Trump in primaries,
that's not enough for him to win the election.
We see it clearly in the polling.
My point is that their votes count.
They are people who want to vote for it.
Right.
This whole pundant elite conversation is relevant to the voters.
Okay.
Let's talk about the other stuff that happened this week, because it's important.
And I thought Barack Obama really nailed it when he said about eight years ago
that Americans claim.
to their guns and their religion
because this tragedy was brought to you
by guns and religion.
And anytime
somebody shoots up a gay nightclub,
the question is,
was religion involved? It's what religion was involved.
What? Are you kidding me?
There's only one religion that is bombing and terrorizing people.
I was just about to say that.
Okay. There is it.
I was just about to... Yes, exactly.
I'm sorry, folks. That's the truth, too.
I agree.
We have to be real on both counts.
Yes, the God hates fags people show up with placards and posters,
and they're despicable, but they don't show up with guns and bombs.
That's just the world as it is today.
Thank you.
The answer is not to ban Muslims, however.
The answer is to ask more of Muslims, I think.
And the answer is incontrovertibly, in my mind,
that we need some kind of control on the weapons in this country.
Yes.
We do not.
You do not.
I own 14 weapons.
I've owned weapons since I was 12 years old.
I've hunted since I was 12 years old with my father, my brothers.
We do not need large capacity magazine, semi-automatic weapons,
in the hands of anybody in this country other than possibly law enforcement.
Period.
Why do you need 12?
Where is my old friend Larry?
Why do I need that many?
Yeah.
I've accumulated them.
Oh, I see.
My father died and left me some.
A brother died and left me.
Sure, Christmas.
Yeah.
And I don't go sell them to just anybody.
Good for you.
Oh, I'll buy some.
Yes.
I'll buy them off you.
I wouldn't sell them to you.
Because my friend...
I don't know what Larry's talking about.
He's totally wrong.
First of all, high-capacity magazine.
John McCain made an egregious statement.
John McCain...
He withdrew it, but he made an egregious statement
that said that Barack Obama was responsible for Orlando.
If anybody is directly responsible for Orlando,
it's the Republican Party for stymieming all manner of gun control.
Okay.
But you're not for repealing the Second Amendment.
So there still would be 300 million guns in America.
I wouldn't repeal the Second Amendment.
Lieutenant General Jerry Bricken said that Christ brought the Second Amendments to us.
So, you know, I wouldn't repeal the Second Amendment.
First of all, there is no, I wrote a book about this.
There is no gun control law that has ever been proven to reduce gun crime.
Australia did a confiscation program.
There is no gun control law in the United States of America
that has ever reduced gun crime.
And actually, on Australia, the violent crime.
But can we get real here, first of all,
if he didn't use the AR-15,
there's plenty of other guns in America.
Maybe they would not have been as effective.
But we are not going to have the cops go around
and confiscate 300 million guns
any more than we're going to deport 11 million illegals.
This is like saying, I want more great lakes.
Yeah, America lives in a total fantasy life.
But also, Mary...
But you have to do something.
You have to do something, for example,
like saying that people on the no-fly list
can't buy weapons.
Absolutely.
You know?
You have to have something.
All right.
This has been...
And I'm also for getting rid of the AR-15s
because it's such a microcosm of what's wrong with this country.
The AR-15...
No one will ever give an inch.
You have so many thousands of guns available.
Do you have to have everyone...
Okay, so you guys, who is to blame then for the Boston bombing?
The Sarnaevs.
No, but what? There's no guns used. So if guns are the cause of the terrorists...
So because I kill you with a knife instead of a gun and someone else killed someone with a gun, guns aren't...
You make it more difficult for people to kill people, and so fewer people will be killed.
You just said that guns are the reason that the terrorists are killing us.
Nobody said guns were the reason. We were saying that guns are a part of the problem.
And I'm just saying it's just admit they're a vice like drugs or alcohol or anything else
and that you don't care that some people are going to get killed.
Like drugs, if you say to me,
some people are going to get hurt and killed by drugs,
I would say, that's too bad, but I still want them.
Just admit it.
But...
Just don't make it a virtue.
It's not a virtue.
The whole point of gun ownership and the Second Amendment
is that we, me, I'm a gun owner, like you,
I think you are?
Yes.
Because we want to defend ourselves.
That's the purpose of the Second Amendment.
It's not that we can go out and kill people.
Nobody wants to kill people.
By the way, let me clear something up here.
I don't own guns to defend myself.
Why do you own them?
I own guns to hunt with.
So what happens if someone comes in your home?
You're just going to go go?
I don't own the guns in case someone comes in my home so that I can shoot them.
Okay, but that is the purpose of the second.
I don't expect someone to come in my home because I have law enforcement and other people around me to keep that for happening.
Response time is 10 minutes.
The average response time for law enforcement is 10 minutes.
So in those 10 minutes with that person is in your home, you're telling me you're not going to touch your guns.
I'm 71 years old.
I've lived in this country for.
71 years, except for the years I was deployed fighting for this country when I did need my guns,
and no one's ever entered my house and tried to kill me.
I want to take issue with what you said about Islam being singular in terms of the violent
risk that it poses for gays. Because Donald Trump said this week, like, ask the gays what you're
afraid of. And I think, you know, when you talk to gay people in America, if Donald Trump
actually went and asked the gays, you know, the biggest violence risk is suicide. There's all of this
immense social pressure against LGBT people, against being who they are.
That's a different issue.
No, but I think in terms of...
It's relevant here, probably.
It's relevant, but it's not, it's apples and arms.
No, because you have Donald Trump and other Republicans coming and saying out,
we're the real protectors of LGBT people in America because we'll go...
Right.
No, but I think there's...
He didn't ever know the term before last week.
I promise...
I promise you he thought it was a sandwich before last week.
They make the best ones at Trump Tower.
But I just, you know, Islamist violence in the United States is extremely rare.
I think it's very different from Europe.
In the United States, of course.
I've said this so many times.
9-11 and 2,000 people killed, and now we just had 49 people slaughtered by Islamic radicals.
We had how many in San Bernardino?
But this is the American myopia.
We're all just going to put our hands out?
They think Muslim, they think of the 3 million Muslims in America, who, by the way, are the lucky ones,
because they can come out of the closet, or they can elope with someone who is not.
of their faith. Or they can leave
the religion. Or they can shoot 49 innocent
in a war. This is not the case for so many millions
of Muslims around the world. Where are the liberals to stand up
for them? The people who could not abide
apartheid for one second
somehow
when it comes to gender apartheid,
which is in so many countries around the world, they are not to be heard.
It is a liberal cause, or it should be.
There are millions and millions of Muslims
who are gay around the world,
who have no one to stand up for them,
and I didn't hear any of it this week.
None of it this week.
In 10 Muslim countries,
you get the death penalty
for just being gay.
Could we have a little perspective on this issue?
Size matters.
Including Iran, where we just have been making deals.
I mean, these are countries where, I mean, this religion...
It's not comparable.
It's not...
Okay.
It's what you're saying, and I'm agreeing.
I disagree with your trying, I think you're trying to attribute it to religion.
That's like blaming Christianity for pedophile priest.
You know, I don't blame Christianity for pedophile priests.
I blame people.
It's connected.
It's the justification.
I'm not sure that's true.
I think it's a putrefaction.
It's a corruption of the religion when people get a hold of it and do these sorts of things.
Well, let's look at why we're here with religion.
And back to what you said about Senator McCain.
We're here because we're having this problem with ISIS.
It's gotten so powerful because President Obama said,
I'm going to take all of our troops out of Iraq in 2011.
We're going to get to this, but I have to interrupt you because as long as we got on to religion,
one of the amazing headlines I saw in the paper this week was that Mel Gibson is making Passion of the Christ too.
Now, I saw Passion of the Christ.
As movie making, I thought it was terrific.
but I didn't remember the ending.
And I'm thinking, where do you go with this story?
Now, Mel, I don't know if you have a script yet.
I don't know.
But I know you need a hit, my friend.
So let me just make a few suggestions here.
How about Ariana Grande as Mary Magdalene
and One Direction as the Apostles in Passion 2?
I know what you did last Easter.
Kevin James is the Lord
Kevin Hart is
a doubting Apostle Thomas in
Passion 2. I thought you was dead.
How about this? One of the biggest hits of all time,
E.T. It's about a guy who comes to Earth.
Just saying, Passion 2,
J.C., the Extra Celestial.
Or get Tyler Perry involved.
He's got a great track record, makes a lot of money.
Passion 2, Judea's family reunion
is right on target with his Christian.
following.
The new Ghostbusters is coming
out. Look, my money is on those
gals proving the naysayers wrong.
Why not piggyback on that and
do Passion 2? I'm a ghost,
Buster.
Who doesn't love the chipmunks?
Those wisecracking scams could make
a great
supporting cast for Passion 2.
The squeak shall inherit the earth.
All right.
He is the actor, writer, and director of the documentary Meet the Patels,
which is currently available on all streaming platforms.
Ruby Patel.
Hey, Ruby.
How are you, sir?
Great to see you.
How you doing?
Okay, so, you know, your name is spelled R-A-V-I,
and I just learned it's pronounced Ruvie, not Ravi.
No, well, you mislearned.
It was actually...
I fucked up, I fucked up everybody.
Not Ruby?
It's pronounced Rovey.
Rovey, right.
Where'd you even get Ruby from?
Did you use the spelling?
I'm bad.
Sorry.
Rovey, okay.
But Patel...
I'm a big fan of yours too.
It's just the name.
I loved your movie.
It is.
Thank you.
Patel.
How many Patels are there in India?
A lot.
A lot.
Like 10 million?
I couldn't tell you the numbers.
Right.
But so many that, like parents like yours who are Patels,
not only want you to marry an Indian girl.
Right.
They want you to marry a Patel.
That's right.
That is unique in the world.
And even a specific kind of Patel.
I mean, you recall in the documentary, you know,
my dad is naming all these different kinds of Patel's that exist,
and then this 10-mile radius of the kind of Patel's that fit best.
And it was the way that they got married.
And that's, you know, the movies about kind of how they keep that system going today.
Right.
And what's so interesting about the movie is you seem so Americanized.
You are.
But obviously...
Thank you. Is it the haircut?
No.
No, because...
Hips are cut.
You're funny and you don't have an accent.
And the whole movie, I'm going,
why is this guy even doing this?
Because you're trying to make your parents happy.
That's right.
You had a girlfriend, a white girl.
That's right.
And you...
Which you love to.
Broke up with her.
And then to make your parents happy, you go on this journey
for a year to try to find an Indian girl all over the world,
using their bio data.
I mean, they really do this scientifically, right?
Yeah, no, it's a real thing.
And, you know, I didn't just do it just to make them happy.
I think it was more about figuring out what I really want.
And part of what I want is to make them happy because I love them.
But also, it was the first time my life where I really got to question these things that were handed to me.
I think a lot of the problems that you guys are talking about today
is about people finally having to face these laws and religious beliefs
that kind of conflict with the way morality has evolved today.
Right.
And your parents had a polite golf course.
applause.
Yeah, there's...
Not a bad shot.
Not a bad shot.
He's on the way.
So, but your parents had an arranged marriage.
I mean, they met each other for 10 minutes before they got married.
Yeah.
That's so interesting and it worked because they're very happy.
Oh, they're so happy.
They're adorable.
I mean, you...
Absolutely.
There's cinema gold.
Right.
Yeah.
Yes.
But we in the West, I mean, we're...
I mean, we're sort of enamored with romantic marriage.
I mean, every movie has the meet cute.
You even referenced that in your movie.
You know, you have to meet cute, and then you have to agree on everything,
and you find the one.
And I guess it looks like, you know, because of the divorce rate, that's problematic,
because we expect so much, whereas your parents expected nothing,
so they were always playing with the house money.
Yeah.
Is that about right?
I think that's about right.
I've summed it up.
You know, I think the one thing that I learned while making the film was, you know,
I was raised with this kind of over-romanticized idea of love,
that it's this thing where you're just supposed to bump into a girl,
spill coffee on her, and next thing you know you're married and you have kids.
But then I saw the way my parents got married and how well it worked.
They were an incredible couple, and they're so in love.
And I was speaking to someone when we were doing the research,
and they told me about these three major pillars to love.
And depending on where you were raised and what kind of family,
you put emphasis on different pillars.
So here in America, we put almost all of our emphasis on love,
this idea of chemistry.
And because we put so much emphasis on it,
the minute it goes away, we're like, oh, this isn't right, it's over.
And it always goes away.
It always goes away, because the more you get to know someone,
you find out they're crazy, because we're all crazy.
And that's, you know...
They're not just crazy, you're just too used to them.
There's so many so many fucks in the cans.
in the can.
And then you're hitting the can.
There's gotta be one more in here.
No, but when you get to that crazy,
that's when you're crazy comes out,
and then you can talk about each other's crazy,
and maybe you're a little less crazy.
That's kind of how it works.
But you know, that's where the other two pillars come in, actually,
is you can't just stand on love.
You also have to have a commitment.
And commitment is increased by compatibility.
That's where these bi-data things really do.
But what's so interesting is that the white girl,
the white girl that you were with at the beginning,
that you broke up with, you get back with her.
Your parents are disheartened at first,
and then they learn to love her.
And then the great irony, they love her,
and you dump her again.
I love that part.
Oh, man, thanks for that.
That's really helping things.
That's a sweetheart move by you.
But isn't that what happened?
I'll tell you what was the interesting twist
in that whole thing.
You asshole.
You married somebody else.
You didn't marry that girl.
When we...
That's a whole other documentary, Bill, if you want to get into...
I know, but that's what happened.
When we broke up, the beautiful part about it,
we talked about putting it back in the film,
was my parents were mad at me.
They were upset.
They had come to love her.
Right.
And that, to me, is, like,
the real lesson for me out of that whole experience in my life
is how to really love,
in the context of confidence.
because we all know what it's like to want to make the people around us happy.
And with us, I think, like, what you saw in my parents and myself was like,
hey, I want to make this work, we have differences.
But you know what's more important than that, is creating just a safe space.
Right.
Okay.
So I want to go back to the discussion we were having before.
I want you to join it.
Great.
We'd love to.
Great.
You were saying something about the rhetoric, which is very interesting.
Because Obama addressed that this week, why he doesn't say, is it.
radical Islamic terrorists. Yeah, he says he won't, he said, without saying, he won't say radical Islamic terrorists.
I don't understand this. I cannot understand why he won't say who the enemy is. And I mean, Larry, you're a lifelong career, Colonel.
How do you identify an enemy in war and not, you're in the Vietnam War? Do you were saying, like, we're fighting against some people in Asia?
Well, first of all, as I said in 2001, I would not have called this a war. I would have,
have continued what we've been doing before and used the law enforcement instrument and thereby
made them the criminals they are. Treat them as criminals, not as warriors. Look at the problem
we had and the issues we created by trying to define them even in the law once we had decided
to make them warriors. We then decided we had to make them illegal combatants so they couldn't
be warriors. They're not warriors. They're criminals.
ISIS is waging war against the West.
And President Obama, just for political purposes,
that we're taking out our soldiers in 2011.
Well, first of all, ISIS isn't waging war against the West.
It's waging conflict in Iraq and Syria, principally.
And Paris and Brussels.
Oh, well, you know, that's their extension of their influence.
Oh, well, you know.
Where they're waging war, it's not war in Paris.
If you treat it as war in Paris, you've got a whole different paradigm.
Why haven't the French declared war?
Well, they are.
Because they're not as stupid as we are.
The reason you.
You don't...
Okay. Go ahead.
The president's reason for not using the term
Islamist extremism is the idea is he doesn't want to give in to ISIS's frame
where there was a war between Islam and the West.
He doesn't want to set up this situation where, you know,
one and a half billion Muslims around the world feel the need to pick sides
in a war with the West.
The idea is to contain and destroy ISIS without letting them become a representative.
Here's the one thing that Trump said this week that made a little sense to me.
He said,
Listen to Obama today, and he sounded madder at me than the shooter.
Couldn't we just address the big elephant in the room, which is the shooter,
before we go right to elephant phobia?
But trying to address the shooter as a product of Islam is like, as I said before,
trying to address the priest who abused his children as a product of Christianity.
By the way, let me say, I've been married for 50 years.
I've got to get this in, and I agree with everything you just said.
Thank you so much.
And you love your, okay.
Happily married.
Happily married.
I think what he's hitting on is like a systemic issue
that happens way before even religion.
It's about family.
It's about the lack of introspection.
By the way, everyone needs to be in therapy.
Wouldn't the world just be a better place?
If everyone was in therapy?
No.
I mean, we don't place any emphasis on introspection in this society.
And I feel like people go out there in the world.
Yes.
I think that's all we do.
Liberals, yes.
As a country, I don't think...
And people with money.
I guarantee you the people who are serving in the armed forces
and the places they come from don't do therapy.
And with PTSD, they actually probably some need them.
All right. But back to this issue.
Could I quote David Cameron?
This is a prime minister of Britain.
I think we all respect him, right?
These are the kind of things he says after a terrorist attack.
He said, we believe in respecting different faiths,
but also expecting these faiths to support the British way of life.
life. Too often we have lacked the confidence to enforce our values for fear of causing offense.
He says these reforming voices, they have a tough enough time as it is, talking about Muslim
reforming voices. We can't stand neutral in this battle of ideas. We have to back those who share
our values. I would love to hear that first. Now, of course it's wrong when any Muslim American
is given a dirty look, asked extra questions, but it's not the same as people getting shot.
We have to put things into perspective.
It's not just Muslims that shoot people.
Of course it's not.
I mean, up to this point, my memory is Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City
where some of my good friends died.
Sir, that is a false equivalency.
Come on, how many terrorist attacks, Muslim-inspired terrorist attacks,
have there been in the last 20, 30 years?
And how many Christian inspired?
The New York Times...
I didn't mean Timothy McVeigh was Christian-inspired.
What I'm aiming at is what...
James Comey has been talking about.
There are bad people and bad ideas.
The mentally unstable person.
He wasn't lone wolf and mentally unstable.
He said and called, he called the police repeatedly and said,
I'm doing this for ISIS.
Yeah, it was something he could reach out for and make himself seem something.
And what about the...
You know, I think Americans are already, are already alarmed enough about terrorism.
It is a statistically really unlikely mode of death.
People should be more worried about ordinary...
Well, they are trying to...
Except they are trying to get...
a nuclear weapon. And I don't think
there are any Christian groups that are
trying to obtain a nuclear weapon.
I've been in the briefings. I've been
in the briefings with the NSA, with the CIA,
with Israeli intelligence,
with French intelligence, with British intelligence.
The scariest thing in this country
to all these people, and I
guarantee if James Comey were here, he would
be shaking his head up and down,
is the lone wolf terrorists getting
his hands on something like you're talking about?
Something like the Unabomber.
Something like the guy in Orlando, something like any of these people who go off their rockers and start killing people,
happening that the FBI knows nothing about because they are lone wolf.
And you were saying the chance of that being the Unabomber or Tim McVeigh is equal to that being Islamic terrorists?
I'm saying the FBI and other law enforcement entities are more concerned about that than they are the other
because they can listen to, track, network, go after the finances of,
even introduced the military into combating the other.
They can't go after these lone wolves.
Larry, this guy is...
Larry.
I think these lone wolves, it's a very easy to...
This guy is not a lone wolf.
You guys, stop repeating that.
He is not a lone wolf.
He went to Saudi Arabia twice.
The CIA...
I mean, the FBI has been investigating him twice.
He was on the terror watch list, which his gun would have been blocked.
Had he been still in the terror watch list in 2016 when he bought that gun,
he is not a lone wolf.
He got the propaganda from ISIS online.
He went to Saudi...
He's also not a member of ISIS.
I mean, the guy's on Grindr.
You think they're calling him part of his team?
He's getting up to heaven.
He's going to get a thousand virgins waiting for him that he can't even touch.
And he's got to give a dick for me.
ISIS was all for him until they found out.
Yeah, and then they're like, whoa, can't do that anymore?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
These people, they're using ISIS because it's available to him.
He's lonely.
He has no one around.
He's powerless.
And that's an easy source of power because he can't get rejected from it.
He's married.
He's married.
He's born and based on him.
And he says, that's my team.
now I feel validated.
And it's the same stuff that happens
in social conservatism.
How so? Wait, wait, how so?
Well, I'm saying what happens
in any religion when people are oppressed.
Were you talking about?
I'm murdering people.
No, I'm saying what happens is
when people jump out, when people act out,
they latch on to the closest thing
in terms of, in this case,
it was just the ideology that is...
It creates murdering 49 innocent people?
You had a guy shoot up at Planned Parenthood Clinic
in Colorado Springs just a few months ago.
I'm saying...
He killed Freed School.
No one is saying that the only bad things happen in the Muslim world.
We are saying, I am saying, lots of people.
I agree with you here.
You have to go where the preponderance of it is.
And there is no doubt that most of it happens in this sphere.
Religion.
In the name of this religion.
Yes, in the name of this religion.
We're not saying all Muslims in the world are like this.
Of course, most of them are not.
But when I hear Hillary Clinton said this week,
freedom-loving Muslims, well, this is what Bush,
this was his mistake,
all people in the world want to be just like us.
I don't know if freedom as we think of it
is the same way they think of it.
What's important to me is separation of church and state, for example.
Well, great. I'm glad you're applauding that.
That is not something that is important
to most Muslims in most Muslim countries.
In fact, it's antithetical to what they believe in.
The state follows the rules of the Koran.
Church and state should not be separate.
I hear you talk about this all the time.
I have more Muslim friends.
All of you guys combine.
And they live here in America, and they don't subscribe to that.
In America, that's $3 million out of $1.6 billion.
Exactly.
But shouldn't they be saved from being a part of that description?
Of course.
But shouldn't the other ones be included in it?
Shouldn't the liberals in this country stand with all those people
who have to face what I call everyday terrorism?
Let's add to the weight of the three million.
there are plenty in Indonesia.
No one is saying all.
In Indonesia, if a woman wants to join the military,
she has to undergo what they call the two-finger test.
What?
They put that in her.
It is dirty.
They want to see if she's a virgin.
And this is the moderate country that they hold up as an example.
And look, and this is part of the U.S. foreign policy,
is trying to promote...
So let me see if I've got you straight here.
So you want our president, whether it's Trump or Obama or Clinton or him ever,
to go out and declare...
war on all these people who don't believe the way you do?
Where'd you get that?
What did I say to declare war?
What did you do about it then? I said get real.
Oh, get real. Okay. What does that mean?
It means establishing that... Stand up for liberal values. Stand up for things that if they were
happening in...
Well, I can guarantee you that.
Liberal, not liberal with a small L. Not liberal political.
What are liberal political? Liberal like in...
From the French Revolution.
So you would side with it.
Separation of, like separation of church and state.
I know.
A quality of women.
But how are you going to bring this?
to them?
Well, first of all...
By force?
Of course not.
Well, that's...
We've got 50 people
in the State Department
right now using the dissent channel
saying that that's what we should do in Syria.
What do you mean?
Well, I'm not in the State Department
and I'm not one of them.
Thank you, panel.
Time to go to New Rule.
New Rule, the 36-year-old...
Georgia man who stripped naked
in front of a Waffle House
and pressed his genitals
against the front door
has to work on his verbal skills.
I mean, how hard can it be to just say,
I really, really like waffles?
New Rule, Canada's Joanne Barnaby,
who claims she was outpicking wild mushrooms
when she was confronted by a hungry wolf
and then cleverly lured the wolf towards a bear
so the bear would attack the wolf.
Has to tell us what kind of mushrooms
and how many did you eat?
New Rule, there's such a thing as being too ready for Hillary.
This is creepy.
New Rule, if you want people to take you seriously,
lose the basketball net trash can in your office.
It doesn't say I'm fun and sporty.
It says, so many of my ideas are shit, I've made a game of it.
New Rule, the next time a Christian dies by mistake
and makes a brief visit to heaven,
while he's there, he needs to ask Tupac Chor,
do you know you're selling Sprite?
And finally, New Rule, now that the Trump phenomenon
seems to have peaked.
Americans must ask themselves,
why?
Why, for so long,
was there one set of rules
for everyone who's ever run for president
and then suddenly a completely new set
for this Donald Trump person?
Because when it comes to lowering the bar,
he really raised the bar.
So, it's been a year and a day
since Donald Trump descended on an escalator
to announce he was running for president,
and since then, he's just kept on descending.
So let me take you back in time to the pre-Trump era and show you what people used to think was a monstrous political gaffe.
Here's Al Gore and Bush I first, each doing something at a debate that the country found to be beyond the pale.
Here's differences.
We have a question right here.
Yes. How has a national debt...
Shocking, isn't it?
Sying and looking at it.
get your watch to show such blatant disrespect
for our sacred democracy.
Then there's this guy at a debate,
bragging about his dick.
He referred to my hands.
If they're small, something else must be small.
I guarantee you there's no problem.
I guarantee it.
What if Bush had done that?
Read my lips, six and a half inches.
Or take the sensitive issue of race.
There was a firestorm back in 92
when Ross Perrault
said to a black audience,
I don't have to tell you who gets hurt first
when this sort of thing happens to it.
You people do.
He said you people.
Smother him with the AIDS quilt.
George Allen was a rising star in 2006,
and then his career was over when he said,
this fella here over here with the yellow shirt,
Macaca, or whatever his name is.
Did you hear it?
Did you hear it, everybody?
He said Macaca.
whatever the fuck that is.
Trump tweets more racist shit than that before lunch.
He retweets white supremac.
He began his campaign by calling an entire minority group rapists.
He says our black president faked his birth
and might be working with ISIS.
He did this.
Oh, look at my African American over here.
Look at him.
That's not worse than you people?
And what about basic old,
dumbness. I seem to remember
Dan Quayle being
pronounced unfit for
office dumb
because he misspelled potato.
And Sarah Palin's brief
flirtation with respectability
came crashing down
when she could not name what news
sources she read.
All of them, any of them that
have been in front of me
over all these years.
But Trump doesn't even pretend he can
read. He just
He hears things.
I'm hearing.
A lot of people are saying.
This is his favorite news source.
He hears things.
It could be from a passing mental patient.
Could be the voices in his own head.
And when he does read, it's the National Enquirer.
And he refers to it as the paper.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm not being fair.
He does have one other news source.
All I know is what's on the news source.
internet. Right, me too. I get my news from Pornhub. No wonder he once said, I love the poorly
educated. John McCain and Bob Dole, both veterans, but war does things to a man, both were
accused of being too angry, too angry to be president. After all, Bob Dole once said this.
And Senator Dole, is there anything you'd like to say to the vice president? Yeah, stop lying about my
record.
A raving lunatic!
But this is okay.
I don't know what I said.
I don't remember.
What about that?
Obama once just compared his poor bowling skills to the Special Olympics,
cut to the apology tour, but we're good with this.
I don't know what I said.
And finally, the ultimate third rail, insulting the military.
Obama got endless shit for once saluting with coffee in his hand,
violating an ancient military rule dating to never.
But Trump can say John McCain isn't a war hero?
If Hillary said that, they'd be burning pantsuits in effigy.
All right, thanks to our show.
Don't forget to watch our convention coverage in July, three nights.
I want to thank my guests, Colonel Lawrence, Locals, and Emily.
Billy Miller, Josh, Barrow, Robbie Patel,
and Rebecca Tracer.
Join us now for overtime on YouTube.
Thank you.
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.
