Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #727: Gov. Wes Moore, Chris Cuomo, Sarah Isgur

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 4/24/26) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Welcome to an HBO podcast. from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. All right, here we are on overtime of the Democratic Governor of Maryland, West Moore, and the host of Chris Cuomo Project and News Nation's Quervo, Chris Cuomo, and she's the editor of the dispatcher's Stodis blog, his new book is last brand standing, Sarah Isker.

Okay. All right, here are the questions from the people out there. All right, Governor Moore, what should the government's approach be to regulating prediction markets and preventing insider trading? Oh, I know why they asked this, because you just made a move on that, right? I sure did. Yeah, we just signed an executive order banning anyone in Maryland state government from doing any type of predictions market.

It's really for two reasons. One, specifically on the predictions markets, it actually is ridiculous. So, for example, if you look at the most recent polls that we have seen, we're at around 57% approval rating, one of the higher numbers for any governor. if you look at the prediction markets on the probability that I'll win re-election, it's coming in around 97%, right? So, what was keeping me or my family from saying, you know what, we have an idea?

Let's put a $250,000 bet that I won't win re-election. And then I just basically tank it in. I stopped going to work. I go to my debate and I start stripping naked. That's my... That's my... I might backfire. I don't know.

And then I quit. And then someone else wins. And now I would walk away with about $4 million. So you made this executive, was there any pushback in the state from anybody? I don't care.

I know, but was there. I mean, listen, I'm... Who can defend it? I mean, you defend it? No, no. I'm saying like someone in the governor was like, but I wanted to be drifting next. I have an idea.

I have an idea. I mean, it's crazy. And it's just like it's ridiculous when you think about the type of grifting that goes on. And this is on the heels of a whole bunch of other stuff. Yes, today, this was in the news. A soldier who was involved in the operation to get Madero out of Venezuela, which was a success, by the way. Yep. Okay, we got to give success, success.

Yep. Okay. He bet on it. Yeah. He won $400,000, and they asked Trump about it. And Trump said, the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. No irony. No irony when he said it.

Because he used to have a casino. But he's not wrong. The whole world has become a casino. Because he's making it a casino. Well, he certainly has contributed, yes. Contributed. Well, you think Polly Market wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Donald Trump? I think it would anyway.

I'll tell you what. It would absolutely exist. And I want to know if there's any chance that you're not going to run, by the way, because I will put in a bet right now. Because that's the way the corruption works these days. It's right in your face. I don't want to see this soldier be the face of this problem. Of course, what he did is wrong.

That's easy. You're making billion-dollar oil bets minutes before the president makes an announcement, and no one on the right says anything except Annapolina Luna and two or three others who should all be heroized for this, in my opinion. The corruption is so in your face. Yes, what this cat did was wrong, okay, and he's going to suffer.

But he should not be the face of the problem. And people in Congress who are yapping about him when they said nothing about these other things are the worst. And when they're trading stocks and they won't even have a vote on the bill, they are the worst. Congress could pass a law tomorrow doing what you did. They could pass a law tomorrow preventing themselves from trading stocks. They're not doing it. They're not even bound by the employment discrimination laws that they've passed for everyone else. And we don't hold them accountable.

We're just like, oh, I guess Congress just puts out press releases and holds hearings, and we fight over gerrymandering. Like, put the pressure where it belongs, not on the courts, whether they're going to uphold or strike this down. That is a statutory question, which means it's up to Congress. How many people, if you did a survey, would even know who the congressperson is? One guy applies. I don't even know what, I don't know if it was that I do, or it was like, yeah, you're right, Bill.

I don't know. Well, their new approval rating is at 10%, and I would love to meet someone. in the 10%? Who's like, yeah, they're crushing it out there. It's them. It's them. It's who it is. It's them and the donors. You know, that's who it is. All right. Panel, what does the panel think of the DOJ bringing back firing squads for executions?

That's why we love overtime. It's just questions I would never ask. But this is what people want to know. People want to know. We're bringing back firing squads? I think there is a great argument. First of all, it doesn't violate the Eighth Amendment because we had versions of this at the Founder.

It's better. I actually think that what we have done, and we've done this in all parts of our society, we have sanitized our language, we have sanitized everything so that we don't actually understand that we are putting people to death by the government. Right? I actually think that's okay, but we shouldn't sanitize it.

We should do a firing squad so that people know what we're doing. Well, okay, if you're going to do it, do it efficiently. A firing squad, they're dead in a second. That's right. What they do now is this chemical thing where they first, they kind of just put you out. You know, you're just...

The Nora Jones music is playing. It can take close to it. It's like a spot. Right, really. And then half the time, the shit they put in you doesn't work. It takes a really long time to put someone to death. We have people watching it. It's not... Yeah.

Yeah. Can I offer a different perspective? Yes. Please. While we're all lining up to shoot people in there. I'm just saying, if you're going to do it, that's the way. I think that there's an aspect of the death penalty that should matter, which is what is the social instruction? And I think that the reason they're doing this is that this administration is very embracing of brutality.

He has a very misplaced sense of macho, this president. And, yeah, we're just going to shoot you in the head is some kind of attempt to be tough. And it's not tough. It's weak. And I think these kinds of instructions, you know, look, this is the same story for all of our families. My family came to this country because they thought it was a place that was going to be better, that it was beautiful for opportunity, where they would have a chance, where they would have to worry about the oppression they had at home. That's not what we are with these kinds of things.

If you want the death penalty, fine. It doesn't work, okay? It doesn't deter crime. Well, it deter is that criminal. It is. Yeah, yeah, it does. But it gives an instruction that death is okay, that murder is okay. Killing is okay. It's not murder technically.

Killing is okay. I think the social instruction matters. I think when you're saying, yeah, well, just shoot you in the head. I think it cheapens something that should be the highest value. Where are you on the death penalty? Where is it in Maryland and where are you personally? In Maryland, it's banned inside of Maryland. But I do think it is an important point

because when people are talking about the death penalty as an idea of a deterrence, the reality is it's not. Right. There's no data that shows that this is a deterrence for how people are going to behave or how people are going to or how people are going to act. But it does create a bigger thing about how are we thinking about this value? How are we thinking about what it is that we hope for and what it is that we're aspiring to? And I think about it in context of this, right?

When I first became the governor, we had an absolute violence crisis within our state. I mean, Baltimore City was averaging almost a homicide a day when I first became the governor. And I said, I was very clear, that we were going to have a different type of approach, that we made historic investments in local law enforcement. We made historic investments, and we made Maryland one of the only states that actually helps to fund the U.S. attorney out of balance sheet. So if a person commits a violent crime, particularly with a firearm, I'm going to have them handcuffs in 24 hours, and we're going to make sure that crime, especially if it is a firearm crime, we're going to help to make sure that goes federal.

And if you look at the results, we've now seen how the violent crime rate in Maryland is down nearly 50%. it's the fastest drop in the entire country. The last time the homicide rate was this low in Baltimore City, I wasn't born yet. The reason I bring that up is this. We did not increase the severity of the punishment. We increased the probability. We made sure that you knew.

You wanted to get there and be violent in our communities. You want to make communities and families like mine less safe? Or we're going to get you, and you're not going to get out. We did not have to increase and say, like, we're adding a death penalty to it. But we said you will be held to account, and it has worked better and faster than anywhere else in the entire country. Well, speed and certainty are the two things that we know work against violent crime. That's right. And that's what I mean about being a Democrat who's able to talk about a subject like that in a more centrist way.

You know what I'm talking about? And it also matters that he's a guy who signed up, okay, at 17, to have to make that kind of life for death. decision because he wasn't a war correspondent. You know what I mean? Like this is a real warrior that you got sitting next to you. And I think that that matters, and I think it gives you a different perspective on how precious life is. Okay.

This week, Governor, Los Angeles became the first major school district to require screen time limits. We are? The first? Okay. They did another Australia did it, but I guess they're not here. What's your approach in Maryland? Yeah, where are you on screen time?

Well, I know we actually have legislation that just works his way through Maryland that I will be signing that's actually going to do a band-to-band, a bell-to-bell ban on devices for our kids. There's a school in Houston, by the way, they got a metal grinder, and if your kid is caught with any screen, their phone out during the school day at all, they put it ceremonially into the metal grinder, and it just goes in, and that's the end of your phone. Yeah.

Well, it's just in here to thing. That's a deterrence. It is. It is a turn. But I don't, our families and our teachers are going through enough right now. Right? We've had, especially post-COVID, we now have a teacher shortage that is vast. And we've been really focusing on getting more educators in the classroom, getting more men and more men of color inside of the classroom.

We have cut the teacher vacancy rate in half in the state of Maryland. And a lot of them actually have been, a lot of those federal workers have been fired. We started something called our feds to eds, which is actually saying if you're a federal worker who's been fired, If you're working for the NIH and you have a degree in physics and you want to be a physics teacher, we're going to get you certified, we're going to get you qualified, we're going to get you in a classroom as quickly as possible. We've cut the teacher vacancy rate in half inside of the state of Maryland. I do not want our teachers fighting with Mark Zuckerberg for our kids' attention.

And so I want to make sure that we're focusing our kids are locked on tasks. Any parent, okay, so I had kids in a great public school out where we live. Nothing has made a bigger difference than them pulling the phone and if there was one fight that I could redo that I totally blew I mean the list is long but this one if I could get this one back

I would have never given them the phone I would have never given them the smartphone never not until they were 55 years of it I believe it that thank you everybody catch all new episodes of real time with Bill Maher every Friday night

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