Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #682: Jesse Eisenberg, Stephen A. Smith, Rep. Ro Khanna

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 1/24/25) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. All right, he wrote director and co-starred in the Oscar-Namination movie A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg. It's fantastic. Go see you. He hosts the SBN's first taken in Stephen A. Smith show on YouTube. Stephen A. Smith, and he's a Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley, Rokana. Okay. All right, here are the questions from the people.

What does the panel think of Doge? That's Elon Musk's reforming the government operation, pushing to eliminate the penny in order to cut federal spending. Well, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Like, I was advocating for this over 10 years ago. Put it in editorials. It's funny because it's so stupid that we still make pennies. And it costs, of course, costs way more to make a penny.

Right. Yeah. A nickel costs 14 cents. So I'm not going to hate it now. that they are doing it. I'm for it. I'm for... I've said, look, if he has cuts on pennies, nickels, de bloated defense budget with five prime contractors, fine, let's work with him to do that. Some people have said, oh, why are you saying that when it's Elon Musk?

I said, look, I'll oppose him where he has a bad idea and work with him where he has a good idea. So you do want to work with them? On things like this, yeah. Okay. I just think that if... We have to work on bigger things in the penny. If you... I don't mean this alone.

it's going to do. If you're universally recognized by a lot of people is weird but, but a genius, right? My attitude is, well, let's find out what he's talking about. And let's see if it works. If it's, if it's beneficial for us, we can deduce that based on the information we receive and decide whether it works or not, as opposed to just automatically dismissing anything he comes up with because he's on the side that we don't like. Well, maybe the penny is the gateway issue for bipartisanship. I mean, you joke, but... Now, are you going to play him, Jesse? You think you could play Elon Musk?

I'll play anything. You can do it. But yes, I mean, that's how you build trust, little by little. By little. Okay. Jesse, how did the story for a real pain evolve from being set in Mongolia and then went to Poland? What does that mean? Oh, yeah.

No, my script, I mean, you saw the movie. It takes place in Poland. It was originally set like in Mongolia. It was based on a short story. There was a Jews in Mongolia? No, they were doing something else there. Oh, what? They were going to visit their friend who had started

this like yurt farm in a mountain. But anyway, that's not important. So wait, you were going to play the wrong character and you had the wrong country. Yeah. This is the artistic process. It's how things work, you know? But can you imagine if, what

would the story have been in Mongolia? I wrote it. It was a short story. I wrote it for Tablet Magazine. It's like it was a story about these two guys who kind of one guy envied the others political purity and when they got to Mongolia the guy who they both idolized had kind of sold out to this

other company and so like it's a about the disillusionment of your childhood ideas that's not important. I just have a simple question I mean why the hell is that had to be in Mongolia instead of right here. It sounded like it's stuff that goes on right here in the United States. Right. Because it

was awesome to think about when we were shooting a movie in Mongolia, Stephen. How come when an actresses, that's just the artistic process? If I said something like that on how I do a bill, you know, I'd get booed. You're right. You're right. You're so right. You know, Costa Blanca was originally called San Diego. That's not true.

That's not true. Is it appropriate that the Trump administration is asking government employees to turn in their coworkers if they are engaged in DEI efforts. I'll start with a no. Turn in. I'm not loving again. I said I wouldn't pre-hate. Hating.

Hating. Different between prejudice and Judas. I'm hating. Right. Hating. It's not inappropriate. It's scary. I mean, it's like a surveillance state.

Turn in. As a libertarian. You should be... What do you want me to do? I just said I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate. That's good. I just want me to cut off a fear. You see what the Democrats?

The Democrat. It's never fucking enough with these people. The complaint that I have over this whole DEI issue is that everybody thinks about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it automatically connotates in a lot of people's eyes, particularly on the right, that somebody that's in that position must have gotten there because of a level of incompetence and what have you.

It's not merit-based. My attitude is, similar to the Rooney Rule with the National Football League, similar to affirmative action, what the hell was the policy necessary for to begin with? Because we had a power-structural, the United States of America that was unfair, that was unequitable or inequitable. They didn't give a damn. And somebody had to compel them to do the right thing conscientiously.

And nobody is talking about that in regards to DEI. But also things change. You were talking about the past. But they haven't changed enough. Look at tech. Look at how many African Americans, Latino Americans are in tech, which is producing all the wealth. But is it because they're barred? I heard the same story.

You would understand this better than anybody because you're a sports genius baseball. I've heard there's only 7% players in baseball who are African-American. That's right. Well, this would be a problem if they were barred from baseball as they were before 1947. There's only 7% because they want to play another sport or no sport at all or do something else. They're not barred. It's not a problem. It's not a problem.

But what they're trying to do on the right, and I've been getting on them about this, is that, again, when you're talking about DEI, anytime you bring that up, or you're a DEI hire. You didn't really deserve it. You didn't really earn it. You just got it because of that policy. And I'm like, but you're just going to bring that up but ignore why the policy was there to begin with. That means there was a whole bunch of white people before there was DEI.

They were getting jobs that you didn't. They didn't deserve. I know. But there was, I think, the University of Michigan, one of the schools like that had something like 200 DEI officers at a college, the most liberal place. Yeah, that's excessive. No, no, it was excuse me. Okay. And who's ever going to give up that job and go, well, this situation is better now.

I guess I better fire me. Right. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you want to do away with it, just don't act like, I understand, don't forget what brought it about. Right, that's why it's right. And it's where people look for talent. If you look at these tech companies, they go to Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, you think they're going to the HBCUs and looking for talent there. If they're not pushed to go outside their networks, they're going to hire the same people from the same schools and replicate the same wealth gap. We've got a 10-to-one wealth gap in America. And instead of talking about that, we're beating up on DEI. But we had this in your industry, or the way you represent, women were like, they started two programs, big programs like 20 years ago to get more women in engineering positions. And I think in 20 years it went up 1%. I don't think it's because they were barred from doing it. I just think people choose to go into different avenues of...

There's the study show that African American young men and women are more interested in tech than even white kids. but they don't have the same pathways. They don't, we are denying reality if we think that someone young. So you're being denied? I'm not saying that. I'm saying if you graduate from Stanford, I taught at Stanford. You get funded before you have an idea. You literally just email the venture capitalists.

You get funded. If you're at Morehouse or you're at Spelman or you're at Claflin University, you think you could just email someone at Kleiner Perkins and get your company funded? No. I think companies that want to make money hire the best people to make it for them. I don't disagree. agree with you, I just think that we have to keep a watchful eye on things. Of course, for example, with the eradication of a lot of these DEI programs, right, let's say, for example,

hypothetically there's 20 jobs that are available and DEI has been shoved aside. Now, when you fulfill those 20, when you fill up those 20 jobs and all of them are white, you got a problem. Because what you're saying is, oh, they're the ones that are qualified and nobody else is. And that's a system that used to exist in this country that you see a lot of people clamoring the return to. And we can't ignore that. 20 jobs would not go to white people. They'd go to Asian people. Okay.

Okay. Just not blacks. Well, I, really? I mean, this is one of the... Asian Americans wouldn't even be in this country if it weren't from the Civil Rights Movement. Okay. But we're talking...

Well, if you're going to bring that, I bring up the fact that whether it's affirmative action or DEI, the biggest beneficiaries of both programs with white women. Let's not forget that. But can we live in the air we're living in? Yeah. Yeah. Because I think it's 2025.

I mean, this is one of the most liberal parts of the country that you represent. Yes. So you're saying in one of the most liberal parts, maybe you're right. I don't know. I'm just questioning it. That there is this prejudice against... I don't think it's formal. I don't think people there at Apple or Google are saying, oh, let's not hire black people.

I think it's easy when you're building a company to just hire the people you know, the schools you know, and it takes extra effort to reach out beyond your networks. We all have that. Okay. Is Trump's meme coin a scam? I read about this thing. I mean, oh my God. I mean, what?

What, me? I have, I put my money in a mattress. It's so simple. He wakes up one day. This is a man, like, remember, he wanted to buy an NFL team in 2014. That was the last time I spoke to. He wanted to buy an NFL team of Buffalo Bills. Right.

The price taxed for them was $1.4 billion. He had $1.1 billion, according to my NFL sources. You know, they say, Is he a billionaire? Is he not whatever, whatever. Here we are years later, and they're talking about because of this mean coin, in about a week, it's made up 89% of his total wealth. What that says to me is that, oh, it's an easier legal way to funnel money to him when he needs it. And that's what it really comes down to. It's like literally having a Swiss bank account, because what you can do, they track the transactions.

The biggest transactions are from overseas. and none of us can see who it is. But if you put in a billion dollars in the Trump coin, you can have it in your crypto wallet, you can just show it to them. Hey, look, I got a billion dollars, and no one else knows it, and you can curry favor with them. I mean, the term for this that people use on the street is shit coin.

Okay. Because it didn't exist Friday afternoon. I don't even understand what it is. Right. But I don't understand OnlyFans. I don't understand. I mean... Unfortunately, there's...

There are far too many people who do understand what only did. Okay. What I'm saying is we can argue about race and gender. The great divide in America is people who grew up in the virtual world and people who didn't. That's, I think, going to be the great divide. People who don't live in the world I live in. I don't understand this. It's a picture of Trump, or you're just imagining it. I don't know.

Don't forget my wife. Don't forget Melania, she's got one too. Melania. Yes, right. And somehow it made him $58 billion. In a week. There's no complicated tech to it. It's like if he opened a Swiss bank again,

it said deposit the money there, and you don't know who's depositing the money. Look, if someone buys... But that's a bank. It's still your money. This is not. Let's speak on behalf of the streets. Could you tell us how to do it?

You know what I mean? $58 billion in a week. Could you let us in on that? We'd like to know. We'd like to know. I mean, they said Putin was worth $40 billion from stealing over, like, he's been president since 2000. This guy did it in a week. I'm sure he was like, top that bitch.

Okay. Netflix announced its raising prices again, despite adding 19 million news subscribers over it. Do you think movies like this moves like this from them and other subscription services will backfire? What do you think you're in show business? My movie's on Hulu. I don't know. Yeah, it really is, you know. But, I mean, not because I'm, you know, these kind of things are always in flux

and they have more data than we can possibly imagine any media company ever having data. And, you know, so they're going to be changing probably their prices in it by minute. I know the answer. Okay. What happens is that Netflix is venturing in to live sports. Yes. That's the new king. You got live sports.

You got sports rights. That great Tyson fight. You got league rights, particularly with the NFL, which is a cash cow, to a lesser degree to the NBA, and what have you. If you have rights with that and you can carry live events, then you can charge exorbitant prices because you know people are going to flock to it because they want to see the games. And that's really what it comes down to. So it might end up backfiring, but that's down the road.

That doesn't negate what's going to transpire now, which is fattening their wallatism. But streaming has ruined football. I wouldn't say that I would Why? Well, first of all, when you watch it You can't, if you watch it Not when it's live

You can't zip through it Like you can with the commercials On a regular game They won't let you do that You have to guess Where the play resumes Am I wrong? You know what I'm talking about?

I was alluding to the quality of the broadcast When they did the Tyson fight That was bad That was bad Because it crashed for a little while But when they did the NFL game, everybody flocked to it. I mean, you had a lot of...

Because it's on there. You have to. But I'm saying it was a good broadcast. It was a really good broadcast. Yeah, but also, if I want to switch between two games, if I'm watching a game on old channels, like Fox and CBS, I can do it with one button previous. Right.

This I have to, like, sign in. Well, let me... This is a button issue, not a political issue. It was a button issue. You got it. You got it. You got it. Penny and then this.

You got a button issue. You got to sign and you got to get the account, but I will tell you this. On YouTube, for example, I mean, I love the fact that I can see four games on one screen, and I can double-click and get it on the one game, and then I can go back and double-click and see the four games again, and I'm watching the action. I like that, and a lot of people like that. I think that is the future.

All I'll say is, if they can charge a lot of money, they can pay the writers and the actors and the screenwriters enough. That's what that heart strike is about. All right. Let's leave it there. Thank you. You're a great panel, guys. A little romance never heard anybody. We'll see you next week.

Thank you. Catch all new episodes of real-time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch them any time on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com. Lazzang sur-gillet, Pucance-moirene for 15 minutes. We're like to dojo. Pre-to-joo?

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