Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #711: Gov. Andy Beshear, Kate Bedingfield, Michael Steele

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 10/24/25) 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 Maugh. All right, here we are with the Democratic Governor of Kentucky and host of the Andy Beshear podcast, Governor Andy Beshear, the co-host of the weeknight on M&PZ, Michael Steele, and she is a CNN political analyst and former White House Communications Director under President Biden, Kate Benningfield. Okay, here are the questions from the people for the panel. Prince Harry O. What do we even care? Prince Harry, Megan Markle, Steve Bannon, hundreds of others called for a ban on developing AI superintelligence

that would be smarter than humans. Are they right to be alarmed? Well, it's a little late. I mean, isn't this worse out of the barn? That trains out of the station. Yeah. Yeah, we should be alarmed, but, you know, at this point,

the expectation is that our Congress needs to get into the conversation, but we saw how they handled the conversation. with Facebook and all of that back in the day, and it didn't go well. Does this come up in your state? It does, and I think AI can be a tool, but it can't be the answer. And the answer to every challenge created by AI can't be solved by AI. This can't be just a circular discussion.

So I think it's recognizing that it's coming, recognizing that it's going to cause a lot of changes, but then creating the right guardrails to try to handle it responsibly. But didn't they already pass a law? Didn't Trump pass a law that said no guard? guardrails? Isn't that where we are? Yeah, and they too. In the one big beautiful bill, right? They took out some of the state-specific guardrails, too.

So it's... And I read this week, like, 45% of what it's asked, it gets wrong. Well, yeah, well, it's... So you're saying it's human. You're right. Right. It is. It's human intelligence. It's strong-in-by-human.

It's... It's basically. It does exactly what humans do. It tells you, it does exactly what humans do? The BS is like, yeah, I know. I think, to be concerned about about the consolidation of who owns the AI platform. And that consolidation is something that's going to wind up in the hands of very, very few people who are going to have control over what it does. And then, of course, the impact on jobs. I mean, I mean, I'm sorry. I just landed here today, and I was shocked

at the number of driverless cars on the road. And I was talking to the driver, and he was like, There's my job in five years. Some electricity, I think, is the other thing we've got to look at. It's already so expensive. It's sucking up all the electricity. Yep, yeah. And the masking of sources and everything that it provides you. I mean, you just, you don't know whether the information right or wrong

where it's coming from. And that, we're already in an era of social media where especially kids don't have the discernment, the judgment. They're getting fed, you know, a bunch of, sometimes a bunch of crap. And it hallucinates. And it literally hallucinates. And it can fall in love with you. Yeah.

And try, I mean, it does it. I mean, can you blame it? It'll try to get you to leave your wife. Horrify. Horrify. Wow. Somebody really. Hey.

And it also does some bad things. Somebody really just told on themselves. What does the panel think of Trump's latest group of pardons, including the former CEO of the crypto company, by, banance, and former congressman George Santos.

Well, I mean... He takes care of his own. All I could say is he didn't do Diddy. It didn't do. Not this week. Did he's not one of his own. He's next week.

He's next week. Well, you know, I mean, I made a list of all these things that are, Trump does that are like, um, not unprecedented, but also completely unprecedented. That's to me the pattern.

Like, he, uh, Change the White House. Like I said, lots of people have done it. Not to that degree. Go to war like he's doing with Venezuela without congressional authorization. Well, that's every war since World War II. Pardons.

Family corruption. Under Biden, again, not to this degree. And, you know, everything he can point to and say, well, they did it, and I'm just going to take it to the endth degree. That to me is what this is. He pardons his friends. He doesn't even make a... He doesn't try to hide it?

He's a... My friends, if you like me, I like you, you get a pardon. If not, if you check the wrong box on your mortgage form? He pardoned... That's it. He pardoned George Santos saying at the end, he always votes Republican. And that is a reason or at least commuted this sentence.

But there are consequences to all this. You look at the rioter he pardoned from January 6th. Just made a death threat against a... If you let somebody get away with violence, they may cause it again. Okay. What does the NBA, what does the NBA gambling scandal reveal about how pervasive sports betting is? Well, if it spread to the players a lot.

Yeah. Pretty darn, pretty darn, I think. I think. Look, it's part of the culture now. It's seeped into everything. that you can now bet on. I mean, in one sense, the Brits have been doing it for a long time, and they've been looking at us.

They look at us and I don't know what the problem is. But here, this is a new space for a lot of folks, and we've always been very clear about that bright line with sports and because we believe in the honor of the game and all of that. And so this news this week for the NBA is really, it's going to hit them. It's going to hit them hard in their fan base, I think. And they're going to have to figure out how to manage that storyline.

Because I think it cuts deeper than Amy realized. Yeah, it's clear that the leagues are going to have to take a heavier hand. Because this undermines the integrity of the game. You know, if your fan base doesn't feel like the game's on the level. There's only a matter of time before your audience arose. Gambling got so pervasive. It did. Isn't that what to do?

I mean, I remember a time when you could gamble one place, Las Vegas, Nevada. Or Reno. No, but the state of Nevada. And then it was Atlantic City, but... Yeah, right, and that came later. Came later. And then it was all over, and then it was on your phone. And I don't even know why people want to bet, because

it ruins the fun of it. When I owned a piece of the Mets for 10 years, it kind of ruined the game, because I was worried about my money. Really? I was worried, and for good reason, because there were years I lost some. It's deeply addictive.

I mean, gambling. It's deeply, deeply addictive. It's deeply, deeply addictive. And the same way that staring at your phone is addictive. And you meld those two things, forget it. I love to have heard your locker room speech. I will say now there's a way to track it, though. I mean, you look at there's been gambling scandals in the past with Pete Rose and others.

They could track exactly how much was bet before that NBA player went out with an injury early and start looking at it pretty quickly. Okay. So let's end with one that is a nice big fat pitch right down the middle for you. Oh, thank you. How will the big, beautiful bill affect rural folks in Kentucky? The big, ugly bill. It's basically punching rural America in the face. It just is. It's going to devastate rural economies because it's going to close or significantly impact rural hospitals.

Every one of my rural hospitals is the number one payroll. in their community. And so if you eliminate a large part of that payroll, you don't just close the hospital. You close the local restaurant, you close local coffee shop, and you close the local bank. You can't take a trillion dollars that's flowing through rural America out of it and not expect people to be impacted, but then there's the workforce. So right now, if you've got a clinic, you can miss a couple hours of work and see a doctor. But if you have to drive two to three hours, you're missing a day. And then you take your kids, and then you take your parents. It's going to profoundly impact America in really negative ways.

So what are you going to do to make sure that that is, your citizens are as protected as possible? Well, everything we can, we're going to try to make sure that people don't get kicked off Medicaid that should qualify for Medicaid. And you can do that on the state level. What they've tried to do is they tried to double the paperwork. Sadly, they're hoping that those parents of a special needs child who are busy in both work, don't check a box, and then they lose coverage for six months. Or the other side, you know, long-term care ends up being covered by Medicaid.

And so if you fail to check that box, are you taking your parent back into your home? Who has to stop working? How can you afford that coverage? I mean, this isn't just going to impact communities. It's going to devastate families. This is the worst piece of legislation in my lifetime for what it's going to do to my state, but I think also rural America. Okay. Thank you, panel.

We'll see you next week. Thank you guys. 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. Lazzang sur-gillet, puissance-moly for 15 minutes.

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