Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #686: Rahm Emanuel, Fareed Zakaria

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 2/28/25) 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. I'm with the bestselling author and host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria's DPS Fareed Zakaria, and the former mayor of Chicago and former ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. And Chief of Staff, weren't you? You don't think that's a more impressive credit than those other two, Chief of Staff of the White House? I feel like that is the biggest job you can have in this country behind the president. Isn't that the gatekeeper of everything, the chief of staff? It is the gatekeeper, but the biggest job is mayor.

Of Chicago. Yeah. And then chief of staff is the worst job until you get through it, and then you look back fondly on it. But going through it is sheer. They don't last long. I mean, like, it's so intense, right, that you can only do it for a lot. 18 to 19 months is the modern average.

Right. Yeah. Not that I figured that out. But with Ambassador. But with Ambassador, you get called. the honorable ambassador for the... Yeah, you're excellent. So you probably get better restaurant reservations

with that. So sensitive, don't you mean? Yeah, you do. And it's your excellency from now on to you. I went through Senate confirmation. All right, this is from the people. What do you think about Trump's proposed $5 million gold card visa

for wealthy foreigners? Is it smart economic move or a problematic policy. I know what he's talking about. Trump wants to sell a visa. You get permanent residency. By the way, we are hardly, I looked this up. We are hardly the first country to do this.

Doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. But, you know, I remember... We actually have a version of it. I think it's called the EB-5 or something like that. So it's fine to do it. I actually think maybe it's because I'm, you know, very patriotic. I think $5 million, we should be charging $20 million. or, you know, American citizenship is worth more than that.

It comes with Ukrainian minerals, though. But what I love about Trump is, and he said, he said, you know, you get the green card, but with this, the gold card, you get extra privileges. Like what? You get to vote twice or what? It's amazing. Well, now you're speaking Chicago language. I'm for it, but it's part of a bigger package on immigration form. It's been 42 years since the law.

last one. So I'm not against it, but it's part of a whole package. I read that the current mayor of Chicago has an approval rating of 6.6%. Rounded it up. I mean, you were just the ambassador to Japan. If that was your approval rating in Japan, they would do

Hirakiri on live TV. They would do it at 27. I mean, what's going on in Chicago as the person? Look, I mean, this is, we were talking about this a little earlier. I mean, you have also the mayor in New York not doing well, obviously other things else over here in Los Angeles, not doing well, the mayor here. Look, and then you got mayors, like the mayor in San Francisco and other cities that are doing

well. So I would say, look, there is a general rule. I had this when I was mayor. Safe streets, strong schools, stable finances. Focus on those three things, and your city is going to be fine. We've gone through five years where people became way too permissive of a culture. they were all, which is why everything's locked up at Walgreens and CVS, and that is a disaster. And I'll say this about our schools.

I don't want to hear another word about the locker room. I don't want to hear another word about the bathroom. You better start focusing on the classroom. We have the worst reading scores for eighth graders in 30 years. And nobody, not a governor, not a mayor, not a president, not a secretary of education is talking about it. We're all wrapped up. Look, in seventh grade, if I know. that I could have said the word they got in the girl's bathroom, I would have done it.

Okay? We literally are a superpower facing off against China with 1.4 billion people, and two-thirds of our children can't read eighth grade level. So no more about the lot. Wait a second. I'm on a roll for a second. No more. I don't want to hear another.

I gave them the light. I don't want to hear another word about the classroom. I don't want to hear another word about the bathroom. until you tell me what you're going to do with the classroom. I know. I'm not. But I think, to be fair, Ram, this is actually... I was being fair.

No, no. This is a huge Democratic Party problem. If you look at Democratic cities, they are terribly run. They have incredibly high taxes. It is impossible to build, so the cost of housing... Let me finish. Let me finish. I'll give you your chance. Now, cost of housing is crazy in places like New York.

and Chicago. If you look at Democratic states, you go to look at New York versus Florida, okay, roughly the same population. The budget of New York State is twice that of Florida. What do they have? The streets paid with gold? I live in New York. I pay the highest taxes in New York. You get nothing for it. And I think that is the image people have of the Democratic Party. Lots of taxes, lots of regulation, but nothing gets done. Hey, I live in L.A. Right. And I think, and I think, you know, listen.

If the Democrats have to own this and realize, the answer to everything is not more taxes, more regulation. People are fed up of that, and they feel that it isn't working. The Democrats, look, as somebody who produced the best graduation growth in the country. Yeah. And we changed our high school. You were a good man, I agree.

No, that's not the point. The point was we changed, but I'll take that. The point isn't, the point isn't, the rules. The point is the results. And the party has gotten way too focused on what the rules are. And I do agree with you on this. We have made it impossible to function as a city or as a state and been so, take an example of this example. Here, obviously, in L.A., it took a fire in a natural disaster to make you realize, you know what, that rule is not that important. In Pennsylvania, a bridge collapse, all of a sudden we go, well, that environmental rule is just not important.

We've got to build a bridge. It's much more important. And I, and I, I think the Democratic Party should take a look at it and say, we're going to be honest, like we did in 1994 with reinventing government. Everything is on the table. Nothing is safe. And let me just look at it and say, that's essential. Those two things get out of here. And that doesn't happen.

And that's a fair of criticism. Maybe this is your next Democratic vice presidential candidate. Maybe presidential candidate. And by the way, by the way, he's also, that comes his handicap. You can slip them by. This gets your handicap parking right here. That added nothing. Okay.

Our calls for economic boycott today, where consumers are urged only to purchase from small businesses likely to be effective in holding billionaires like Jeff Bezos to account. Yeah, I was going to cover this issue when we ran out of time. I'll give you a boycott. Wait a second.

Let me say. Let me tell. If people don't know what I'm talking about. There were people doing interpretive dances. They're also, you know, protest to Trump. This is something called the People's Union USA, and they have something called today. I got emails about this from people. No spend day.

And it's against the malign influence of billionaires, big corporations, and both major political parties on the lives of working Americans. And what it is is you refrain from making any purchases either, in stores or online, to shun fast food, getting gas, for a full day. I know. That look on your face says it all. You're right. It's so fucking stupid.

The idea is, right. The point of those bad has way too much time on their hand. No, this is the thing that's going on today. And it just mistakes, this is why I was saying, that there really is a movement of people doing interpretive dances to protest the Trump administration. Just cuts of USAID. I mean, like, people are starving.

You know, the thing about not winning, as you said, is you're left with these kind of absurdities, right? The answer is figure out how to win elections. You know, that's very, I mean, what's the Democrats? Listen to the Democrats about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom you work for. So these are the only two Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt to have won two terms, right?

Yeah. And what does the party say? They did everything wrong. We've got to get away from it. Wait a minute. They're the ones who won the elections. Right? Bernie Sanders didn't win.

AOC hasn't been present recently. Like, you know, the Labor Party does this with Tony Blair. They're like, Blair is horrible. He won three elections. Yeah, let me get you. Breaking news. 100,000 new community police officers or defund the police. Now, which one do you think is going to want?

It's crazy on this part of this. It's an example of this. I think the party, you know, if you're talking about interpretive dance and everything like that, and what's really crazy about where the party's gone, it's taken an identity politics that the only way you have a moral standing

is you're somehow been hurt. And that is insane. And if you want to take a moral standing of an identity politics based on where you've been hurt, then we're going to do it about the working in middle-class families of this country who's gotten a shaft over the last 30 years.

And that is where we can't. Okay, one more. Why would the Trump administration help the Tate brothers, if that was big news today, the Tate brothers who are, they were arrested in Romania and had been in jail for sex trafficking and, I think, pimping and rape? Even if they aren't guilty of that action? They're going to get a new TV show.

I mean, this guy, Andrew Tate, I mean, even if he isn't guilty of the crimes, which I don't know, But, you know. Okay, he's pro-rape. I mean, the comments are just, you know, things like facts. Women are sex workers. I mean, they're so beyond the pale. And Trump has brought them.

Even Ron DeSantis in Florida said they're not welcome in Florida. I mean, when you're too big of a dirt bag for Florida. And I love Florida. I mean. And there's been Republicans. blowback. Do you think something like this is the kind of thing? I think most people don't know enough about what you were saying, because I have two daughters, and so I watch

some of the stuff he says. Don't let them near Andrew Tate. No, what's strange is like he really, as you say, openly is in favor of violence against women and things. And it's this weird conception of masculinity. I think of masculinity as being about being generous, being, you know, looking after people, being, you know, Having that sentence, you know, maybe a photographic girl.

But this is such a perverted idea of masculinity, and my fear is that, you know, it gets a certain amount of traction. And I think people in the MAGO world think, you know what, maybe this will get us some young men. I don't. But you know, you're selling your soul for that. It's really bad stuff. I don't know if it gets tracked him so much of its reaction.

It is. I think it. I'm not sure I agree that it would get traction. I think it gets a reaction. I think this is not where people want to be. When I'm asking it, I think it might be the thing that we've been asking for years. Where are the old school Republicans? When are they going to finally break through?

They've given their manhood is in a lockbox until this guy leaves. All right. They've given up. Forget about it. Don't look for them. Thank you, guys. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch him any time on a lot. HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com. Lasagne sur-gillet, puissance-molyne for 15 minutes. Oh, you're like to dojo? Pre-a-to-Joo?

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