Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #707: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Alex Wagner

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 9/19/25) 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 Maugh. All right, he's a former independent senator from West Virginia and author of Dead Center, Joe Manchin, and she's an MSNBC senior political analyst and good to the PODSave America podcast, Alex Wagner. Okay, here's what the people want to know. The people, a center-left think tank third way recently calculated a list of 45 words. oh, I read this, and phrases that want Democrats, they want Democrats to avoid using, including privilege, microaggression, unhoused person.

Is this good advice for the party? Not at all. Let the person be who they are. There's only voter out there that can't tell you, I believe, if you're real or not real. And I've always said in West Virginia, growing up, people could shake your hand, look in your eyes and see your soul.

It's all they had. If you are who you are, they'll know it. If you're in it for the right reason, they'll know it. And if you've got to basically explain to them that you're maybe not radicalized or a complete different far left that they don't understand. You know, the Democratic Party has lost 160,000 registered Democrats since this November election. If they think the country is going more left, why is the Democrats losing their own people? They've got to come back to center.

Center left, center rights where you run the country. And all these types of things are saying, and this makes this person non-electable, or basically it drives people away from the party. The thing that drives me away is we're not getting the character and the quality of the person. person we used to get. But I think the point here was that the words themselves are connected to ideas that people... I was asked, I've got to tell you this. I couldn't even believe it. Now, I come from West Virginia, okay, and it's a wonderful, beautiful state with great people.

I'm getting interviewed at one of the college campuses and a beautiful young person who did that. They says, now, how do you want to be addressed? I says, I'm Joe Manchin. And he says, no, he or it? What are your pronouns? And I said, what are your pronoun? I said, it is not one of them, but yes. They. She gave me that option.

They. She gave me that option. She didn't say yet. She said they. You want to be they. I wanted to be Joe. Right. And I kept saying, Joe.

And she had a hard time with that. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, John. Well, maybe because you want to be like a senator, yeah. Never to make, to make big changes in life. The interview didn't go that well after that. Okay.

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headed toward a shutdown. Oh, I'm furious. It's ridiculous. It is, isn't it? I'm going to say it's not. I think there's enough Democrats that will work with Republicans not to shut it down. They're just not talking. This whole thing's blowing apart and, you know, this. They said, we're going to use this and wedge this or wedge that.

If you vote to shut down, you're basically telling the American people, I can't do my job. And what's funny. I can't do my job. Who runs the legislative branch? The Republican Party. Yes. The idea that Democrats need to, listen, I'm, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I understand there can be a political cost.

The Senate or the Congress? Listen. House. It's a Senate. It's going to go to the Senate. It passed the House. It passed the House. Well, what passed the House?

The shutdown? Well, they will. That's not a problem. The CR is going to pass. No, they passed at the basis of CR. Can I just set the table first before you say this about? For years, it was the Republicans who threatened to shut down the government. They did.

And they did sometimes. Now it's the reverse. The Democrats, the reason why this is an issue is because some people, people in the Democratic Party are saying, this is the only leverage we have against the president and the Congress, which is on and said, this is the only thing we can do is shut down the government, which is ironic a little, because, again, they were always for not doing it. They won't even talk to each other, Bill. I'm sorry, Alex, you finish.

There is a sense that the Democrats are up against a wall. They have nothing. This president has run roughshod against the Constitution. He does not care about bipartisanship. He doesn't care about arguably half the country. And people are saying, where the hell are the Democrats? Democrats have a series of talking points that haven't really resonated. You have a few singular Democrats who are out there fighting the good fight as joyful warriors.

I'm not going to name names. But, you know, those in the legislative branch, where are they? If this is their only lever, shouldn't they pull? If that's what they're concerned about, when you shut the government down, how many people are harmed by that? Down the chain. I mean, so many different ways. How you get your services. Well, that was always their argument.

That is the argument there. And I've told them. And does it really change it? It doesn't change. Because at some point, you have to go. You have to go back. And whoever is harmed is going to hold that against. I know when Ted Cruz shut it down one year.

Yeah. And we couldn't figure out. I said, Ted, what are you proven here? We have to get back and let's get working things. And they finally did. You know, who came up and made the deal with McDonnell, Senator McConnell from Kentucky, was Ted Cruz. I mean, was Joe Biden.

And the Democrats got mad. He says, don't you send that Joe Biden up here anymore to make a deal? I have a hard time. Imagine that Chuck Schumer is going to do a redux of what he did last time, given the blowback that he got from his own party. He got it from the left. He got it from the extreme left. He has to be the leader. If he's going to be the leader, he has to stand strong. This does not, don't punish the country for not doing your job and sitting down working with people. The whole thing about the Senate. What do you mean doing a redux of what he did?

Chuck Schumer kept the government open by rallying Democrats and passing a budget. He did the right thing. He did the right thing. So you think he's not going to do it. But it got an extraordinary amount of blowback. And we're talking about, it's not just like, let's just, like, let's just, Just be clear. Yes, it is funding the government. It is also funding Trump's agenda, which there are masked agents pulling people off the streets. It's like the handmaid's tail down in the south. I mean, people are looking at a country that they don't recognize. Half people feel like this is not. Shutting it down, it's not going to change that. I understand. If you shut it down, you give him more power. You give the president more discretion.

That may be true. I'm not, I'm luckily not a person that has to decide that. I just think that it's more complicated than just, you know, we don't like this and we're going to shut the government down. The Senate was designed for the minority to have a voice. That's the thing. The difference between the House and the Senate is the House operates on 218. Simple majority. The Senate was never designed that way.

The Senate was designed to cool things down. He's going to come hot as a firecracker of the Democrats Republic. Yeah, we haven't done too good at that. No. But you're talking about the bottom line is this. Do your job. Talk to each other. Get to know each other.

They don't do that. In her new book, in her new book, Kamala Harris said she wanted to pick Pete Buttigieg as her BP, but didn't because she didn't think America was ready for a ticket with a black woman and a gay man. Was she right? Yeah. I mean, I wish we were, but I don't, I mean, I think based on what we saw, that was probably the right calculation. I was the person that kept saying, why don't you have a 30-day mini-primary after Joe Biden dropped out? Well, yeah.

Find out that the cream will rise. Find out what the new issues are and get rid of some of the old issues that you're dragging along with you that the Democrats have been, you know, saddled with. They don't want to do that. But there are gay people in the Trump administration. Yeah. And they're really standing up for a deal of. One of them's always fighting. Scott Bessent.

Yeah. One of them is always like saying, I'm going to punch you in the fucking face. Literally. No, really. I know. Literally. Yeah. Okay.

So. Yeah. Well, I'm just saying. I know, Scott is a good person. I can't. I didn't hear that. I don't know. I said that.

Pete put it as an extraordinary, like extraordinarily talented politician and maybe could run for the presidency himself one day, maybe will. But I just think her calculation about where the country's at. His support among African Americans is zero. Well, so, you know, the strategy and thinking was maybe not off. I'm just saying politics is complicated.

Yeah. Okay. People are complicated. I mean, I know the Republicans would say, well, if you had the right politics, we don't care if you're black. We've had Herman Kaine. run. We've had lots of people run.

We have, you know, 20% of black men voted for Trump in the last election and gay. We don't care about that either. I mean, Trump was in the news recently. They asked him about that, and he's like, some people like spaghetti, some people like steak. That's why they have menus.

We kind of have to love that answer. So, maybe it's just, I mean, this is what they used to say about Hillary, and people say, oh, you just hate Hillary. And we're not ready for a woman president and they would say just not that one we just don't like that one you keep insisting and i liked hillary i voted for i thought she'd be a fine president but you know i can't look into them and say you know you don't think the republicans would vote for a woman i just think misogyny runs

deeper and stronger than we like to imagine it does oh i'm not i think the country is ready for change bill and if it has a good woman and a strong woman i think Every time I had to negotiate a bill and I had senators, female senators, I always got, I thought, a better bill. The compassion they brought to it, the understanding they brought to it was different when the man thinks. And they had so much more. So maybe... But then, why are we so far behind most other countries in the world? I don't know.

White women keep giving elections to Donald Trump, so, you know, there's that reality, too. It's not just we're talking about a binary here where it's men and women. Just misogyny knows no gender. I'm just saying, but why is America, you're saying America is so misogynistic they wouldn't vote for a woman leader? And I'm saying Pakistan did. So why are we behind, and I think maybe 100 countries,

at least have had a woman leader? My daughter, Heather, when I said, she said, Dad, you know what kind of business you're in? I said, I'm not in business. I'm in ideology and trying to do things right in public service. She says, no, you have two business. You have a Democrat and a Republican business. It's billions and billions of dollars.

And they close it down. They control the primaries. They can basically control who you're voting for. Think 160 million people voted in the last general election, 2024. Only 20 million people decided who you're going to vote for. You can't even get in the primaries closed. And now if you're in a state, and I will say this about California. Thank God.

California's an open state. You have to have 51%. They are basically as open as it gets. And some of the states and most of the states are closing down. If you're 51% of the people registered no party affiliation like me, what you call independence. Only 23% are Democrats. Only 26% are Republicans. Okay, 51% no party affiliation.

They got no representation when you get to Washington. You've got to pick a side. And that side says you better be a good enough Democrat or good a Republican. And if you're not bill, they'll come after you in primary you and get rid of you. we've got to change the system that allows the people truly that's usually the wrong. All right, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

We're a great audience, I appreciate it. We'll see you next week. God willing. 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.