Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #708: Rep. Nancy Mace, Michael Smerconish

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 9/26/25) 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. Okay, welcome Robert Time with the host of CNN Smirkanish and Sirius X-M's the Michael Smokaneh program, Michael Smokaneh, and she's a Republican congressman from South Carolina running for governor in 2026, Nancy Mace. Okay. These are from the people that people want to know. What do you think of the Defense Secretary Pete Hesiveth is, oh yes, Pete Hegseth is summoning hundreds of generals and admirals to Washington. I heard 800 them from around the world are being summoned to Washington. No one knows why. I don't know why people are so unsettled about this. Truly, if it were a corporate

CEO saying, I want to have the leadership come together for a skull session, nobody would care. I read those stories very careful. Like, what the hell am I missing here? I don't get it. The concern. I love that. That's sensible. Because I read it and yes, I think I got scared because They wanted me to be scared. Like, my God, what's going on here? Is he going to, you know, it's going to like braveheart?

He's going to cut them all in a thing and burn the thing. No, I want to be able to work with their allies and be strong and have peace in the world. I think it's a great idea. I mean, I've never heard anybody doing this, but, yeah, maybe it's nothing. But, you know, you got to admit, there's a reason why we're a little suspicious about some of the stuff that goes on with his administration, because they don't know about norm and they don't care about laws. True.

But also Reagan, peace through strength. I mean, showing strength around the world by having these generals come together, I think, is a good thing. The only legitimate concern that I've heard so far, and Nancy knows more about this than I will, is if the government shuts down, there's some concern that some of these folks will get stranded in the nation's capital.

I don't know. Potentially, they're actually canceling congressional delegations I heard, like, right now, this weekend, because of a potential government shut down. And that subject, let me just throw this in there, about being, you know, not too partisan when you hear about stuff. I was reading a lot about this week, TikTok.

Now, TikTok looks like it's getting sold. And a lot of people are very upset about this. Like, now it's going to be Oracle who's going to own a lot of it. And it's, you know, more, you know, plutocrats owning things in America. But it seems like it was the same people that were saying that Chinese cannot own this company. So what do you want? Do you want Americans to own it or don't?

Because who did you think was going to buy it? Mom and pop? Well, here's the fact. I mean, over the last year, year and a half, Oracle already basically housed all the data here in the U.S. there was no backdoor way for China to get in. But Oracle has had this data. They have firewalled this data.

So there's really not much of a difference between now and a year ago. I'm concerned about who controls the algorithm. I thought the conversation with Aden was terrific tonight, and I'm really worried that too many young men in particular are getting bad messages from being locked into a bad algorithm. But if the choices between an American company and China, the Chinese government... No, theoretically, it was a national security concern that began this whole process. That's what I'm saying.

So I don't know that you have the national security concern with Larry Ellison that you would with Xi. Well, my bigger concern is we have apps in the app store that China has done, that Iran is done, that Russia has done. So TikTok isn't the only risk. We have a lot of risk in the app store. We're not addressing the actual national security problem. We just took one target, one company, and vilified it. And we're not actually fixing the overall problem about what data or what adversarial country might have access to our data

or use algorithms to harm American citizens. Okay. And by the way, the younger generation will be thanking Trump to be the one for saving TikTok. Yeah. Your evil laugh. Okay. All right.

Here's one for your evil laugh, Nancy. Why haven't the Epstein files been released in full? I give it three weeks. Three weeks? Yes. So the 218th signature will happen next week, I believe, when there's a special election. That person, when they get sworn into office next week, will sign the discharge petition where we will be at 218. I am a signature on there.

Once we get back in session, the first week of October, the discharge petition have to passed a cure for seven days, once you have 218 signatures, and then we expect a vote probably the third week of October. And Trump doesn't get mad at you for doing this for... I haven't been threatened. Right. You know, and I must... Well, let's see.

There's still time. There's still time. No, I mean, that's good for you. Yeah. I mean, do you really think there's something we don't know? I mean, I just feel like it's Al Capone's vault. I just feel like that... What do you think we're going to find out?

Yeah, that the whole world was really in a pedophile ring, that every rich person was doing this. I think we know what it was. I've said this many times. When a guy has a lot of money and you don't really know where that money came from, he's a pimp. He's a pimp. He's some kind of a pimp.

He connects nerdy guys with girls. You know, Bill Gates cannot be, you know, I'm not saying he did anything, but I'm not saying he didn't do anything. I mean, why was he so interested in a guy like Epstein? to Nancy, to Representative Mesa's credit. I mean, it takes, what, four Republicans to make this happen, and she's one of them, and I think that's great. Yeah, sure. You know, for the detractors of the president, who I think have their fingers crossed that he's going to show up in all of this and that's going to be.

It's just, it's not who he is. You know, is he someone who appreciates beautiful women? Yes, but I just don't think there's ever a part of what makes him tick. And even the Epstein victim. have stated that he had no part in it. And I've met with him privately. He had no part in it. And they've exonerated him.

So that's not what this is about. But having said that, I don't know why he's handled, for example, the Wall Street Journal. You knew we were going to get a look at that goofy cartoon sooner or later. So why fight it and why sue the journal? I don't get that. Well, the thing that pisses me off about the whole birthday card story is like, that's a birthday card.

Nobody gives a fuck. Like, what about the victims? What about the women who've been fighting for 30 years for justice? And they don't have it. And all the media wants to do. is talk about all the media wants to do is talk about Trump.

I'm like, these women have been fighting in their 50s, late 40s, they're my age, have been fighting for 30 years. And it's like, we want to show them that they're going to get justice. That's what this is about.

And I want the media to write about their stories. They are horrific. They are terrible. And you can't tell me that only one person was an accomplice in a sex trafficking ring with over a thousand girls.

It didn't happen. There was way more than that. And those people that were involved, those predators, those child rapists, they need to be held accountable to the full of success in the law. I don't care if it's a prince in England. I don't care. Go to jail, cold, dark cell. That's good enough for me.

What are your thoughts on Escalator Gate? If you don't know what happened, Trump was at the U.N. this week, and he got on the escalator, and suddenly when he and Melania got on, it didn't work. He was furious and thinks it's a conspiracy. and once the people found yesterday. Now, could it be? Anything is possible? What are your thoughts?

Let us teleprompter, didn't work either. There was a series of things at the... Nothing surprises me anymore in politics. I've seen it all, and I think I've seen it all, something else. I mean, nothing surprises me anymore. I'm like full-blown conspiracy theorists now, this environment that we're in right now. You are?

100%. I've just seen some of the craziest things happen. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. With the moon. We did land on that, right? Yes. No, I don't know. Yeah.

But nothing would surprise me anymore. I mean, the prompter also has gone down. Bill Clinton once did like half the state of the union address off the cuff because the prompter went down. I mean, prompter should go down. Shit happens. But, you know, I mean, of all the ways to get Adam, the escalator. I mean, I don't know why it was, why is it even, you know,

So what? And then they got it working. You know, it just... Well, they'll investigate it, and we'll find out. Here's a off-the-beat question for Nancy. Are you in favor of bringing back public execution? Yes. Especially for child rapists. Somebody obviously knows about your feelings on that. Public execution.

Yeah, I just... Cemetery? Did you watch the video? Did you watch the video of the young woman in Charlotte on the train? Yes. I just... I see those things, and I come from a state where we're not prosecuting. murderers. We're not prosecuting

pedophiles. They're getting one day in jail. And until we... Dylan Roof, who killed nine black church members and Mother Emmanuel is sitting on death row. How long is he going to be sitting on death row? 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, get it over with. You know, Tyler

Robinson, I think he deserves a death penalty. We have it, but a lot of states we're not using it. Obviously, due process and you've got to do all that. But the violence and the crime, people just getting away with it, cashless bail, whatever. I want to see law and order. And I think that would be helpful. Well, apropod of that, I'll bring up one last subject. Somebody didn't write this, but I want to say it,

because it's interesting, some new polling came out. And this is, really, I'm speaking to the Democrats especially here, because Trump's numbers are down. They're down with Latinos, they're down with blacks. They're down 15 points with whites. And when whites say, you're not hip anymore, Ooh. And yet, in the other poll, on issues, Trump still winning. So this is your big opportunity, Democrats. He's down in the numbers, and you still can't score. When they ask, who has a better plan?

Republicans crushing it on crime, immigration, wars, the economy, even corruption. Democrats win by two points on... Respect for democracy. Some of this is just because people are fucking stupid. Two points on respect for democracy. Democrats went on health care, environment, women's rights, respect for democracy. But on those issues, I bet you that are the big ones that they vote on, more. Crime, Immigration, War, Economy, Corruption.

So that's the takeaway there. The only thing the Democratic Party stands for today is opposition to Donald Trump. Yeah. And I just read Kamala Harris's new book, 107 days. No, you didn't. I did. I'll say a lot of lies on this show, but I won't take that. I won't accept that.

I thought you might ask me about it. That's where I had to read it. But the point is, as you probably know, it's like a diary of what happened. But I was looking for, okay, and what's the plan for the future? There wasn't any, and she's just indicative of the party at large. And by the way, that's one of the reasons she lost. She's rewriting history in the book, too. she's now against men and women's sports.

Like, come on. Like, they tried to dismantle Title IX against women when she was vice president. Right. I mean, that's just one of many examples. She could have had 701 days and would have still lost that race. But you're right. The data says its cost of living, it's inflation,

it's immigration, illegal immigration, all those things. Everything else is at the bottom. And by the way... 107 days, way too many for anybody, but including her. Right. But the more they got to... to know her the less they liked her.

I've said this many times on this show. Other countries don't do this. They don't have years to run. They call an election, and they have an election in a month. And nor the influence of money. We should do that. That's going to be hard to get rid of. They've tried.

But, you know, it's like you don't need 100 days. You need 107 days. You tell people your plan. This is what I am for. This is my thing. selling something. You're selling a vacuum cleaner. If I'm selling a vacuum cleaner, I'll tell you why I think it's best. I'm going to tell you every goddamn day for two years? Did I tell you about the attachment that gets under the... Yeah, you did. You told me a thousand times. All right,

thank you very much, everybody. 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. sur-joled, Puisance Moines for 15 minutes. We're like

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