Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #741: Max Brooks, Sarah Longwell

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 9/11/26) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This family is on the brink of civil war. On September 18th, Mobland, the hit original series is back on Paramount Plus. We are the Harrogans. Don't know than yet? In Google us. From the underworld of Guy Ritchie. Do you want to step up the ladder? I won't come at dead. Starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren.

Do I have to do everything myself? You want to want! I'll give you a... Mobland. New season hits September 18th on Paramount Plus. Welcome to an evening. HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series Real Time with Bill Maugh. All right, he is a senior

fellow at the Atlanta Council and best-selling author of Max Brooks and she's the founder and publisher of The Bullwark and author of How to Eat an Elephant, Sarah Longwell. What is that title? How to Eat an Elephant? Why don't you tell them it's a funny book and a funny title? I mean, it's how do you solve a big

intractable problem and how do you get voters to basically understand that the MAGA experiment has been a disaster So it is the Republican elephant. It is the Republican elephant, but it's also an idiom, you know, how to eat an elephant, one bite at a time. You used to work for them. I did. I was a Republican for most of my career.

And then Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party and turned it into a fascist. You think you would go back after Trump? Under no circumstances. Really? You think it's gone forever? I don't think, I mean, I think that the party that I was part of is never coming back. And the voters don't want it back. I mean, all of my work now is about listening to voters. and the Republican Party is something completely different

from the one that I was part of. Right, okay. Okay, these are from the people. Does the panel have any reflections on the 25th anniversary of 9-11? Well, yeah, let's hear from you folks. I'd spout it off. You know, I was thinking when we were talking earlier,

the 9-11 commission did a report where they said one of the biggest failures, the biggest security failures, was a failure to imagine, where nobody imagined that somebody could attack, Americans on American soil, that terrorists couldn't do it. They didn't imagine the idea of turning a plane into a weapon like that. And it feels like that with AI a little bit, that we are in a moment of a failure to imagine

what could happen and that we're at the very beginning of that. Right. Well, I would also say that sometimes the term failure of imagination is a term to absolve you of responsibility. I would call it a failure of belief because every time there's something, there's Pearl Harbor, there's 9-11, there's COVID. There's always people sounding the alarm.

Always. People do imagine it, but then there are people who said, well, I don't believe it. It just wouldn't happen. And that's different, because when you hear it and you choose not to believe it, you have a responsibility. And I think that's the problem.

The COVID analogy is really interesting. In some ways, you know, when you remember, in the beginning of COVID, and it came out later in, I think, one of Woodward's book, that Donald Trump was being told, this is really bad, it is coming for us, and he said, it's the flu, told us

not to worry about it. It seems like his little we'll get the gear and the boom. We just did it on the show about what he said about AI. Right, right. There's a little gear. You just flip it. Just unplug it. It's a lever like on it's like in a train. It's like a cartoon Bugs Bunny train. You just pull the lever and it starts.

AI is important to Donald Trump because I don't know, there's no other way for him to figure out how to make himself into a hockey player beating up the Canadian Prime Minister or, you know, being the Green Lancer. You mean the memes he makes using... Yeah, he loves his AI.

Right. That's how he gets really big and tough. But I feel like watching the towers in real time, and then I remember for at least 10 years after that, there was a lot of conspiracy theories about... What you saw with your own eyes, planes hitting buildings and then the buildings falling down. Oh, sure. That's what they wanted you to think. I feel like it inaugurated an era.

I guess there was always conspiracy theories, but an era where everything was a conspiracy theory, that you could not really trust your own eyes about anything. And this went on for a very long time. Remember truthers? We had to get to the bottom of it. Yeah. I mean... Do you think that's over?

I mean, I wasn't one to the Taylor Green. very, she was a 9-11 Not completely over, but a lot of them really recanted over the years. I mean, as more information came out. And it just seemed counter intuitive, shall we say?

I do think that was kind of the internet, you know, social media and the internet meeting a huge event. And it did break people's brains in the beginning, right? Because for the first time, you could, you know, really go deep on, but they didn't show us this angle or

that angle. And I don't think that the conspiracy, you know, around 9-11, maybe it's gotten a little bit better, but Donald Trump launched his entire political career with a conspiracy theory about Barack Obama's birth certificate. Like, the conspiracy theories, some of them were probably true about Epstein, but I mean, there's, we live in an entire conspiracy land right now. Nobody believes anything. I mean, I think it's just, it's just out of hand. And having said that, I do believe Candace Owens is a man. And a Jew. All right. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back.

Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027-volt and 26 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. Max, what do you make of the far-right party in Germany winning a state election this week? I think this is so dangerous, and I think we have to understand that that immigration in Europe is very different than it is here. For two very different reasons. Number one, they are nation states.

There are indigenous people there that have been there since the fall of Rome. So they feel they have a way more moral clarity. When we say, oh, they're coming to take our country, it's like bullshit, it wasn't ours to begin with. We know that. Everyone knows that. In Europe, no.

The English are from England. The Germans are in Germany. So there's that, but also, when people say they're coming here and they're getting on welfare. No, they're not. Our welfare state sucks. People come here to work. But in Europe, they literally do take from the welfare state.

It's a completely different type of immigrant, which places like Denmark have done studies on. Denmark was very clear. They said, listen, we can either open the floodgates or we can preserve our welfare state. You can't do both at the same time. And the problem is, if we're not careful, Europe is going to tip right.

And when they go right, they go really right. You know, I was at that right-wing English rally a couple of years ago, and it wasn't skinheads, right? It wasn't, oh, three, go, I should, five, you see, what in them? It was mom-and-pop tea shop.

I'm losing my country. That terrified me, because when mom and pop tea shop starts saying, you know, England, for the English, you're like, oh, shit. Well, I mean, there is crazy shit going on in Europe. I mean, the English put out a pamphlet

a couple of weeks ago. about asylum seekers, and they had to tell them, like, we don't do rape here. We don't do child molestation here. We don't do female general mutilation here. There are people coming from countries where we do not really share much cultural heritage. And there are beliefs that just are not compatible with liberal beliefs, which is what's so weird. I was getting into a little bit in the editorial that the liberal, progressive ideas

are somehow the ones that wound up on the other side of the tracks, from where the progressives are supporting. Well, we have an ironic secret weapon in this country for assimilation, and that is the workforce. The fact that when you come to America, you hit the ground running and you are working, and therefore you have to assimilate, you have to mix. Whereas in Europe, if you go and you get on welfare,

you get on the dole, you can be cloistered in a neighborhood where your own community can become even more radical. Can I just say that in America, though, voters don't think about it the way Europeans do. I mean, even I'd listen to MAGA voters all the time say, you know, my wife is an immigrant or, you know, they want people to come here. They just, they talk about, they have sort of a moral alibi where they say, you know, we want people to come here the right way.

And I think that for a lot of, and this is where Democrats are going to have to figure out, like, people do want a secure border in the United States, not just Republicans. Yes. Swing voters, a lot of Democrats. And so understand. that there is a sort of compromise here where as long as the border is secure, Americans want people to come here. They're concerned that people are getting deported. They're certainly concerned that there are masked agents running around shooting Americans and

immigrants. They don't want people to be treated poorly. America is a pluralistic society. Everybody did come from all over. And so I think that we have a real leg up on what's happening in Europe because we are used to assimilating people here. It's what we have done the entire time we've existed. There's also a huge difference between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. And I've seen my think tank work going there. And I can tell you, I've said this before, the problem is guilty honkies. It's the same problem here. It's the problem over there. In Western Europe, they are crushed by their guilt of colonization. In Eastern Europe, they were the colonized, right? At no point in history in a tropical country did someone say, oh, God, run, here comes the

check. So therefore, they have no guilt. They say we take care of our poor people first, before we open up. And that's a huge difference in Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Yeah, they're not quite as pure of blood as you say. I mean, you were talking about the English being English. The original inhabitants of the island

were my people. The Celtic people. The Celtics, the Anglos, the Saxons, the Pits. Then the Germans came. That's why they're called Anglo-Saxons. Saxony is in Germany. They came in the 5th century, and they took over. And then the Normans came. Yeah. Okay? Those were

Vikings. But you can see how it's easier for them to spin it because they've been English since what the time of... Right. But like the House of Windsor, they just made that name up. Battenberg. Their name is Saxe Coburg. Yeah. The king, who was king of England at the time of the American Revolution, didn't speak English. He spoke German. They're fucking Germans. All right. I love the English, but they are Germans. Max, you've written novels set in the Minecraft world. What do you make of 70% of Americans now playing video games for at least an hour a week? I mean, I think video games are fine.

They said the same thing about my generation because we were playing Pac-Man too often. We were going to the arcade. But it wasn't violent. Like, aren't they very violent? Minecraft is not violent. No. Minecraft is, you're building blocks with Legos

and you're planting wheat. Why do they like it? Sometimes you kill the pigs. If you want to be violent, you can, but it doesn't make you violent. My kids play that game, and they're always killing Pays. It depends on the game. But that's their choice. Like, should I be worried that they like to kill the Pays?

And maybe worth a conversation. Okay. But they make meat, they make food out of them. Well, but that's different. We do that here too. It's not like Call of Duty. You can't plant wheat in Call of Duty. You must kill, so it depends on the game.

What is attractive about it? I don't get it. Why did kids... Why would a kid want to... What'd you say? They building... You can build a house. You chop down it.

You punch a tree. You'd make wood and you'd use the wood to build a house. But you're not. You're not doing that. I would... When I was a kid, we went outside and actually did things. I made a little fort. I was...

I don't... When we were... Yeah, when we were talking earlier about the pond... Yeah, the pond boy. I was like, I wish my kids would go to a pond. instead of playing Minecraft. All right. In Minecraft's defense,

I will say that a game like that actually teaches kids things like patience and planning. It is brain training if used right. That's why I wrote the books. It's the only game will let them play, so... But if you, yeah, but if you watch your kids play it and you say, no, no, you're actually learning to take life in steps

as opposed to just blowing someone's head off in another video game. I just don't understand why they find it amusing. All right. How should the U.S. respond if China attempts to take over Taiwan? Oh, geez. What a light question. Well, it's kind of an important one. It is an important one, although last I remember,

Darlene Graham didn't know whether Taiwan, what the whole thing was about anyway. I don't think that we have Republican legislators anymore who even know why Taiwan would be an issue. Okay, that's Lindsey Graham's sister. And I've heard that many times, and I'm sure that's true. I don't think she's, I think you're alluding to, that different than a lot of legislators. I mean, you don't have to have any qualifications for running for office in this country. It is really the job.

You have to have some, I think in L.A., and California, I think you need a license to braid hair. Yeah. But you don't, I mean, you just need a bow tie and a smile. That's all you need. You just have to get out there. Tommy Tuberville is a senator of the United States. States. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no. You should ask him about Taiwan. See what he

says. And now it's like, I feel like it's, we're entering the age where the ex-influencers are now going to be the politicians. It's one, first we went to the phase where it was the Fox News people, you know, was the or the weather girl or something was like, I think in Arizona, somebody.

That was Carrie Lake, yeah. Okay, sure. You know. Now it's like, even worse. Now it's, you know, it's the people on TikTok. And their vast stories of knowledge coming to the capital. This is why it is so insanely dangerous the time we're living in because

also TikTok was from the Chinese Communist Party. I've spoken to college kids about this, right? I've said how many of you have seen Gaza footage of the war in Gaza? All the hands go up. How many of you have even heard of the Uyghur genocide? Nothing. Nothing. And when I say to them, more mosques

have been destroyed in China than were ever built in Gaza. Nothing. I said, have you heard of re-education camps? Nothing. Have you heard of a tiger chair, which is the number one torture device of the People's Liberation Army?

Nothing. I said, yeah, because you're all on TikTok because the Chinese Communist Party will never let that out. Well, I hardly think a lot of American teachers know about this either. No, of course. Well, this is the problem is,

if you stop educating the electorate, they will elect morons. That's right. And we definitely did do that. All right, on that happy note. Thank you. If we're alive next week, we'll be right back here. 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. Larry David is back in the new HBO Original Limited series. What a pleasure to be a part of such a historic occasion. Life, Larry, and the pursuit of unhappiness and almost history of America. This is a... Declaration of common sense. Those who don't know history

You are the world's worst butter churner. Are doomed to watch Larry David repeat it. What the hell is going on here? Watch Life Larry in the pursuit of unhappiness. Now streaming on HBO Max. Subscription required, visit HBOMax.com for details.