Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. Well, thank you. Thank you. Studio audience greetings, big day here at HBO for us. Greetings to our new viewers on HBO. Max? Yes. And of course, our regular viewers on HBO and all you cheap bastards, a way to watch us on YouTube.

But look, it's it's it's like what is in our eighth show here from the home.

And look, it's frustrating, but I am very happy that we are still able to do the kind of show we do here and put it on. I mean, it's it's nothing sadder than watching The Real Housewives try to throw wine at each other over Zoom, that is.

But we had a big holiday weekend, Memorial Day, and Americans could not wait to get out there. Boy, the gloves were off and then the masks came off and eventually the pants.

Did you see the like the Lake of the Ozarks and the Jersey Shore? I hope you know people I got to say Americans, it proved once again Americans, they want to do the right thing.

But if someone taps a keg and cranks up the Leonards Skinner, all bets are off.

You could tell conservatives, even conservatives are a little worried about this, we still need to take precautions.

But like Sean Hannity this week was almost begging people to wear the face masks.

I guess he finally has realized that the Venn diagram of most vulnerable Americans and Fox News viewers is a circle.

But you can't blame people for wanting to get out there. The Census Bureau is now reporting that a third of Americans are showing signs of anxiety and clinical depression and they've gained weight.

A third of Americans are now half of Americans. Yeah, we got to get in shape again. Our own governor, Gavin Newsom here in California said he will know in a week if the gyms can reopen. And I hope that is the case because Californians, we miss our gyms. Not not the workout so much the staring at yourself in the mirror park.

That's. And they say there's going to be a meat shortage, which I think is already here, because today I saw Lady Gaga wearing a dress that was passed its expiration date.

I mean. So, by the way, that joke is passed its expiration date, what was the last time, Lady Gaga?

Anyway, things are, I think, getting back to normal and by normal, I mean that we are again witnessing ugly racial incidents.

There was horrible death in Minneapolis and also in Central Park in New York. A black man, a birdwatcher, told a white woman walking her dog who was supposed to be on a leash, that she had to put the dog on the leash and she called the cops on him.

And it turns out this woman, the white woman, is a Democrat who donated to Obama on the memo line. She wrote, Take my money, just don't hurt me.

Another sign that we are returning to normal is that Trump is golfing again. Yes, golfing. And he assures everybody, yes, I'm golfing, but I am laser focused not on, of course, on the virus. Unstopping Joe Scarborough from killing again.

Did you see that he wants Joe Scarborough, this is in great part of what he thinks, Joe Scarborough killed somebody in the 90s and now Trump wants forensic geniuses to investigate on a new show called CSI Brain Fart.

And Trump is furious, get this at Twitter because Twitter started fact checking his tweets.

Oh, my God, not sit well with him. And this is so weird because this tweet, this is a favorite thing to write on for Donald Trump. Twitter, it's like watching a pervert argue with a bathroom wall.

But you know what, I can't blame it on the hydroxy Klaric when he said Donald Trump is that he has quit taking now hydroxy chloroquine, he has pronounced himself completely cured of mad cow disease.

But no word on whether he's going to give up the idea to imbibe household disinfectants. I'll tell you something his fans haven't Pine saw now comes in prescription strength.

All right, we got a great show, we have Ian Bremmer, Soledad O'Brien on our first panel and Tom Colicchio and my friend, of course, Jay Leno is with us. So let's get right to it. All right.

He is the owner of Crafted Hospitality and founding member of the Independent Restaurant Coalition. Please welcome one of our favorite chefs, Tom Colicchio.

Tom, how are you considering all things considered? I'm doing OK. Yeah, you're in the restaurant business.

That's got to be tough because I know no business has been hit harder by this pandemic than the restaurant business. And I must tell you, there is no business. I miss more. And I know a lot of restaurant people through my life, and I know that this is a tough business. Even in even in good times.

It's hard to run a restaurant. You guys are on always on a very thin margin.

Can restaurants survive with distancing and the restrictions that even if you reopen, that they're going to want to put on it in some places?

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. People keep asking, when are you going to open up? When is it safe to open up? And that's really not the question. The question is, when is the dining public actually feel safe to go to a restaurant where people are wearing masks, where there's a smell of disinfectant in the air, where you have to run behind someone when they touch the door handle? And so I think we're still a ways away from that.

Restaurants are the kind of place people want to go and cut loose and celebrate and have a good time and get a good meal. And I just don't see that kind of atmosphere right now. So we're still a ways away. And and you're right, one of the few industries forced to shut down and the home delivery model and all that. I mean, it's just kind of it's it's helping a little bit, but it's really not going to make a difference.

And so we're looking at a pretty bad economy for restaurants for four for a while now until we find a cure.

But I know people who have been to a restaurant in Las Vegas in the last week or so, and they said it wasn't like that. I said I was it was busy. The waiters were wearing masks, but people just wanted to get back to living.

And I think a lot of them are younger and they think rightly so, that, yes, if I get this, I probably will survive it. And I'd rather live. I want to live, not merely survive, you know, their big Sammy Davis fans, the kids.

So you don't think that's going to take place in some places? I think it'll be different, right. In different areas.

In most cases, you have to have your seats. And so we're really starting at a 50 percent capacity. You can't you can't. Restaurants can't can't survive on that. And so we're it's not going to do it. And I also think that's going to be short lived. I think people right now are pent up over the last two months and they want to get out. And I have a feeling that's going to be short lived as well. Then the more restaurants open, open up, we're going to succeed.

It's going to be a lot more seats available. And I think that's the demand is going to spread out as much as well. And so I again, I think that we are going to open up, what, 50 percent at best. That's and that's not going to cut it. Yeah.

And one of the most frustrating things about this whole nonsense with destroying food on farms, you know, we have people starving in this country or at least very hungry. There are lines around, sometimes a mile long for food banks. Restaurants are dying. And yet we I read about people on farms just slaughtering.

Livestock just wasting and throwing away and destroying food, I guess, because restaurants are so much a big part of the chain right up the chain of food in this country, and you take them out of the equation and then you wind up with food just being destroyed. Is there any way to to fix that problem, you think? Absolutely.

And so what happens right now? We have two systems in this country. You have food that goes to the supermarket. This package to the supermarket. And for people to go in and purchase that food and cook it at home. And then you have food that is actually processed for restaurants. And so when you start reading stories about milk being thrown out, well, that is a dairy farmer that actually has a processor that is processing five gallon containers for institutional feeding, for college campuses and hospitals and well.

And restaurants and hotels. And so that processor, when when that chain is coming, restaurants are closed and hotels are closed and college campuses are closed, they can't turn on a dime and they start producing milk in five in one gallon containers are found. Containers are courts. It's labeled differently. It's processed differently. And so same thing with chicken eggs are being cracked because there's a trust processor that purchase eggs from farmers that go into containers that are frozen, that go into institutional feeding pigs.

When it gets the two hundred pounds, the second it gets to a pound, it needs to go to the slaughterhouse and these get processed once the animal has no place to get processed. The farmer has two choices. They continue to feed it. They lose money or they have to euthanize the pig that pigs 250 pounds. It doesn't work anymore. More slaughterhouse. And so we have two systems. Now, what could have happened if we had a plan in this country to actually deal with a pandemic and deal with those millions of people that are struggling to feed themselves right now?

We could have very easily put that food to restaurants and the federal government actually pay the restaurants to stay open during that time, replace that revenue that we lost from regular customers and turn each restaurant in this country into a community feeding center. And that could have for a period of time to actually keep that supply chain intact, that supply chain that is for restaurants and hotels, keep that supply chain intact. So it wouldn't have been thrown out and you wouldn't have seen these lines of people lining up because they could have gone to the local restaurant to get a really good quick meal.

And I'm not going to sort of try to do that. But I could put together a really good, wholesome, nutritious food that people can pick up or could have delivered to people to actually take that bottleneck that is the food pantry and actually spread it out to many, many restaurants.

But why can't we do that on the state level? Obviously, there's a giant leadership void at the top with Trump. But why can't that sounds like a smart thing that a smart governor like the one we have here in California would go for?

Well, they actually are going to do some. It does have a program which actually is not all restaurants, but some restaurants have turned into community center, especially for homebound elderly. We're doing it in your two. And so it happens. But the problem is that local governments, state governments are going to run out of cash already cash starved, and we're going to start seeing services being cut. And so this has to happen from the federal government. They can do it through state, but the money has to come through federal funding.

But then you have to have a plan for that bill. All these years that we've heard that government's too big. And the old Grover Norquist axiom that we want to take government and shrink it down to the size that we can drown in the bathtub. Well, guess what? We're drowning at that time now. And so we don't need big government. We need smart government. We need government that's efficient. We need government that actually is going to react to the needs of the constituents.

And that's what we're going to need right now. That takes planning and that's what we don't have right now. We don't have people who are running our government and are forward thinking.

But what government still can do, of course, is write giant checks for money they don't have, which they have done in this crisis as they needed to. How has the restaurant industry fared with getting that recovery money?

Well, people didn't really help the Paycheck Protection Act and didn't really do a lot for us, especially since restaurants were closed. If you're a small business and you were maybe depressed by 20 percent and you laid off a few employees, you can hire those employees that actually covers those employees for eight weeks. You can pay rent and utilities with that. That's kind of fine. But if you're closed, it doesn't help us at all. And so just today in the House, a bill was passed to extend that period to twenty four weeks.

That's helpful. Take that. Seventy five. Twenty five percent. Thirty five percent goes to payroll and twenty five percent to rent. They actually stretch it out, but it's more like 60 40. And so also the period of time that you can actually pay the loan portion of that was extended to five years and two years. Those are all really positive things. But in the restaurant coalition we're asking for is we need a restaurant stabilization bill. You can bail out airlines and banks in times of need.

And we're not looking for a bailout, but we're looking for just some runway to keep open. And what's at stake here, Bill, is small. Independent restaurants employ 11 million people in this country. And if you factor in farmers and fishermen and cheesemakers and winemakers, it's probably closer to 20 million people. And so we're simply asking the government if you're going to spend stimulus dollars. And you said this earlier in the interview, that our margins are slim, our margins are slim because ninety five cents for every dollar we take in goes out the door.

And so if you really want to actually take stimulus dollars and put it through an entity that will spend that money, we're not going to buy back our stocks with this. We're not going to give our executives bonuses. That money is going out the door into the economy.

I think that's very reasonable for an industry that involves 20 million Americans to ask for a ballot. And I would also just say in conclusion, I don't know if people really understand how much restaurants are vital to the lifeblood of civilization, civilisation's. Happened because of cities and cities don't really exist on a cultural level without restaurants. People need to sit together. I mean, we're not exactly a cafe society. Europe is more. But we still do need to sit and break bread and talk with each other.

And when I hear about fabled restaurants going out of business, you know, swingers went out of business. The first one here on Swingers, it's a diner. It's the movie Swingers. John Rose, great movie. It's where Quentin Tarantino wrote every one of the script sitting at that diner bar there.

And, you know, I just don't know if people understand how much we are losing cultural rise when restaurants go out of business.

And you're right, restaurants have become a part of culture. And these are the places that we're going to need to go to feel normal when we're one when we get through this on the other side of this place is that you're going to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, places. We're going to go to actually hang out with your friends, grab a drink, a bottle of wine, some great food and feel normal again. And this is what we need to get back to them.

I'm hoping that the silver lining here, if there's a silver lining, is that maybe we're going to have a more empathetic country, you know, for years on the anti hunger advocate and right now going into into recovery, there's about 60 sorry. Thirty eight million Americans on food stamps or SNAP right now. The estimate is that there's an increase of about 70 percent. So we're looking at another twenty five million people. So after this, what do we aspire to get back to?

Thirty eight million now, we could do better than that. And what I'm hoping is that the demonization of people who need help Sanae to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and they make poor decisions. And why are they having kids and all of that? That we folks are blaming those people, the average American now, who's lost their job for no fault of their own, no fault of their own, that now they're struggling and they're the ones who are now lining up for food or food pantries, and they're the ones who are filling out those those applications for SNAP.

Maybe now we'll have a better and deeper empathy for people who, through no fault of their own, born into poverty or had a bad break in and they need to get out of it. Hopefully now we're going to see a more empathetic country on the other side of this. That's what I'm hoping for. And and also, I'm hoping that we see because of these comorbidities revolve around food, diabetes and obesity and things like that, hopefully on the other side as well.

Understand that. Proper nutrition and good food actually will keep people healthier and keep people from dying when the next pandemic comes from what I've been preaching every week here, what I've been trying to get across. Beautifully said. Great to see you. Dine with you in person soon. OK, thanks, Tom.

Thank you. All right. Well, this week, I thought I'd show you my garden, I don't keep it to grow anything, I just keep it so I can reenact Don Corleone's dying scene from Godfather one. Misspelling it, the spilling it.

OK, a panel tonight. Wow, we're moving up in the world. He's president of the Eurasia Group and Jazeera Media. Ian Bremmer is with us. Ian Bremmer is where are you? You'll tell me later. All right. She's the host of Luminaries new podcast series Murder on the Towpath. And she's the anchor of the Sunday morning news show. Matter of fact, with Soledad O'Brien, please welcome. Soledad O'Brien is here from Dutchess County. How are you two?

Hey, Bill. I'm great. How are you doing? OK, this is the first time we've tried a panel. I would just like to say to our governor, I don't know why we couldn't be doing this in the studio. Here's my thing. The sooner TV looks normal, the sooner people will stop fearing and the quicker the economy will get better. So let's start with that with the fear factor. This week we passed one hundred thousand deaths, which is hard.

It's horrible. America is such a loser country that we lead the world in this or that anybody dies. But I thought there was a lot of lack of perspective, as usual in the media about that. Yes, one hundred thousand is a horrible number, but eighty thousand more senior citizens. Forty three percent came from nursing homes. A third were over 85. I'm against death. I don't care who knows it for any reason, but I feel like we have lost perspective and I would like your perspective on that.

Let's start with Soledad, because I better get a call out noon or so. Forty three percent more senior citizens than over 65 percent or not. Right.

And so I think the problem becomes there's no real plan. There's not much leadership coming federally. And because there's no plan, I think that's actually what has people more afraid. I do think the media and a lot of ways has blown this out of proportion because polling would show you that most people do support wearing masks and staying six feet apart.

They also want to get back to work where I live in Dutchess County, where roughly evenly divided Republicans and Democrats, you go to the Handford, everybody's got a mess. They're staying away from each other. They all want to get back to work. So I don't know that you can ask people to go back to work if you have people on the front lines who are most at risk. Right. People, poor people, people of color, people in that front line job, receptionist job, the bus driver job, they don't really have protection and they also have bad health insurance.

I think until you solve that problem of a strategy or a vaccine, I don't know how you're going to actually really get people to buy into going back to work, Bill.

I mean, I think that we need to put it in perspective. The United States, one hundred thousand is a horrifying number. But per capita, the mortality we're seeing in the United States is about what we saw in Europe. And Trump isn't running Europe. Germany has done a better job per capita, the UK. France has done a worst job. And on the economic side, I've got to tell you, I mean, every Democrat I talk to tells me Jay Powell from the Fed has been fantastic and they're happy that we've seen bipartisan support on the fiscal plan as well.

So, I mean, it's easy to to poke at Trump because he is so buffoonish and he has so little interest in actually leading. But if we put Trump aside for a moment and just look at the United States government, with all the governors, with all the legislators, with all the CEOs, with everyone kind of trying to get us out of this, you'd say that the US kind of looks like a lot of other advanced industrial economies right now.

OK, let me move on. As long as we're on media and you mentioned Trump, he got mad at Twitter, which I think is amazing because that was you know, that's what Twitter to him is, what radio was for FDR. It was this new medium. He could reach the people directly. He loved it, but they did something you don't do with Trump. They fact checked him. I don't know why they suddenly decided to do this, but they put a get the facts.

Well, that is not the phrase this man likes to hear.

So he is threatening now an executive order to roll back the immunity that the tech companies have. So basically, you could say whatever bullshit you want, and that's free speech, which I support, by the way. And so did Joe Biden. Joe Biden also for this revoking of Section 230. What do you think about that? The tech companies and Zuckerberg weighed in on it. What do you what do you say?

I think there's a reason why. I mean, you had Mitt Romney saying that it was wrong of Trump to go after Scarbro for this obvious fake news and, you know, being behind the murder. But Romney wasn't prepared to do anything about it. Right. There's been a lot of folks that have been hand-wringing, but they understand that taking action is a step too far. And so here you've got Jack from Twitter saying, I'll be the guy to take the flak from everyone.

I'll start fact checking Trump. And obviously incoming comes pretty heavily. They make a lot of money off of Trump. And I suspect the tweets that Trump puts out that are fact check will end up performing a lot better than those that didn't, because that means that those are the ones the media should go crazy after when they don't like him and those are the ones that his supporters should promote even more heavily. I don't think the way you're going to go after Trump is by fact checking on Twitter.

And I don't think Trump is going to be able to do a darn thing or if you want to do a darn thing about the social media companies in reality. Yeah, I don't think it matters at all. It's not going to have an impact. And that fact check is better. It's the bare minimum you could possibly do. Social media companies make a ton of money off. You don't Donald Trump. And and because of that, you're not going to actually see them utilize the myriad of tools that they could use.

They could do platform him. Know that. But shouldn't a politician be to listen?

Facebook's entire financial model is based upon reaching very specific populations with very specific information. So they're just never going to actually get rid of it. And so the Arktos Trump says something completely outrageous. The media says, oh, my goodness, did you see this outrageous thing? And they amplify it and they use social media to do that. And the circle continues and continues and continues, and there's a financial model that supports it, it's just not going to matter.

OK, so let me move on to this issue. Since we have a panel, we can do many issues. And this week, as I mentioned in the monologue, we got back to normal.

And when I say normal, I mean ugly racial incidents preceded by Joe Biden at the beginning of the week, having a controversy where he said, if you have a problem figuring out whether to vote for me or Donald Trump, you ain't black. Now, I actually must tell you, I hate it when people use that sort of phrase. If you don't agree with this opinion I have, then you ain't this thing. You ain't a woman. You in an American, you ain't a patriot.

I'm not for that. But Kanye West, for example, don't agree with him on Trump. But I loved it when he said the mob can't make me hate him. Love that. But it is also true now we saw this incident, I mentioned it in the monologue about the person who was George Floyd. Is his name a black man who was killed by this white police officer in Minneapolis? A replay of the Eric Garner incident somewhat just it could have stopped the crowds yelling at him.

Unbelievable. Trump is all in on the cops and the cops. Let's be honest, almost all of them are all in on Trump in that light. I kind of understand what Joe Biden is saying. Why would a black person vote for Donald Trump? Yeah, except you didn't say that, right? He said in an awkward, lame way, and he apologized, which she should have done. And I think the fact that he's held to a higher standard.

So the story goes on and on and on and where Donald Trump lies constantly and it's sort of normalized all the time. But, yeah, I mean, he could have said in a more articulate way, America is very racist. And in fact, we have a huge problem with white supremacy and sometimes that plays out in policing frequently. And so while people look at these individual cases of George Floyd, a land deal, Sandra Bland of Eric Garner, they're not really individuals.

Right. It's a systemic problem that people don't necessarily want to figure out how to to tackle. It's not individuals. It's a system. And by the way, I would throw in a dog lady in Central Park, Amy Cooper. Right. She's part of that same conversation because what she was doing very clearly as she approached this murder by Chris Cooper was saying, listen, I can weaponize the fact that if I saw the police on the phone that an African-American man is threatening me, that's going to trigger something.

And I can I can leverage that and I can use that. I can use that power against you. And that's the America we live in. So I wish I hadn't said that because it's like you say, I hate when people say those things. It's stupid. And he apologized. And I wish everybody would move on and focus on other things. But I don't think there's a huge number of black people who are supporting Donald Trump. If you look at the polls that some.

But it's a whole lot. Yeah, I think, you know, when Trump told the black people, what do you have to lose, why wouldn't you vote for me? Everything's gone so bad. Well, it's been four years now, and I think they actually have some experience with what they have to lose under four more years of Trump. So, I mean, Biden can can make some really awkward statements, but I don't think Biden's in any danger of losing the black vote to our president president.

You know, it's a shame because when you look at this situation, you mentioned the Coopers, they're both named Cooper, the people in Central Park. If people weren't following this closely, there's a birdwatcher, an African-American guy named Christian Grouper. He's a birdwatcher. And Amy Cooper is a white lady, dog walker and no relation, no relation.

If there wasn't the ugly racial part of it, it could be a meat cute for a rom com. It really could. Two people named Cooper, a dog walker and a birdwatcher meet in the park. But here's the interesting thing I want to ask you about. She is an Obama donating Democrat. Amy Cooper. So does this show so white liberal ladies can be racist? Well, that's my question is this is home. I can't believe it. Well, a lot of people think that way.

Certainly conservatives feel I know talking to them often that liberals are phony about issues like this. That's one thing they don't like about liberals. They say, well, you scold us for things like using oil, but you use oil, you scold us for being elitist. You bribe your kids into college, you scold us for being racist, but you take advantage even if you're not racist in the park of racial inequities in hiring and jobs and housing and lots of stuff.

And in this case, it's going to look to a lot of people. Yes. Like white liberalism.

Is this the man camarones you? It's very thin. Very thin. Is that is that what you're saying?

There are plenty of white liberal people who are racist. And I think, Amy, I no idea about her political leanings, but I'm not surprised at all. She's in York City walking her dog. I'm not surprised. And by the way, I think if you call it a black people that you was going to say, bump into on the street, but we're not doing that anymore, that you call up on some calls, they would tell you, yeah, they work with lots of white liberal people who also were racist.

So it's not a surprise. And I think it's just a mistake to think that white liberal ladies can't be can't be racist. I think we should just understand that the reason why Trump was elected and the reason why there is such incredible polarization in society right now is because the top 10 percent of earners in the United States have been so focused on ensuring that they not only maintain but also extend the privilege. And for me, the scandal that really summarized all of this was varsity blues and all of these very wealthy people that were doing everything possible to ensure that their kids, not deserving, found a way to get into those best schools.

And when I saw the Greenwich, Connecticut, that 50 percent of high schoolers taking the S.A.T. out of Greenwich had letters from doctors that allowed them to take it with no time restrictions unmonitored. That's not just ring. I mean, that is the system that's structural. That's if you have any capacity that's you're going to do. And I think that comes in every shape and every form. But we know what it's about and that's the Central Park incident was enough.

Yet another reflection. And everyone on the wrong side of that said, yup, we know we know what that's about.

Structural is the key word, right? It's structural. It's beyond even liberal or conservative. It is the structure of how historically white women and there's a gazillion examples of this have been able to leverage some power against somebody, a black man. I mean, I think the thing that I find most interesting about Amy Cooper was this idea that she she makes it so clear. Right. And she gets on the phone and says an African-American man is threatening me.

She knows exactly what buttons she's pressing in order to get the police to respond a certain way, a way that could have ended up like Mr. Floyd. So, yeah, I don't think it matters whether she's writing checks to liberal causes or whatever. I'm not surprised at all.

So let me ask about the other incident in the police, because it's amazing to me that the police are still doing this when they're on camera, when there's a crowd filming them, because we're we've been in this we call it bad cops on tape right now for almost a decade. You'd think that even if the cops wanted to do this at this moment, after seeing many other police now being sent to prison for this kind of stuff, you'd think they'd go, oh, shit, there's a crowd with a camera.

I really should take my I don't want to take my knee off his neck, but I'm going to because for me. What is it with the cops? That they're still doing this, is that the training, why didn't the other three cops who were there, why couldn't they have found it in themselves to come on, buddy, you know, in a bar fight, you stop your friend. Come on, that's enough. What is it with the cops that they're still doing it?

Part of it is people don't go off to jail, right? No. Very rarely are officers convicted of murder. So I think that there's a sense of entitlement around that. And I think there's a certain amount of sort of expectation of who's going to be on your side. Digital police, police shootings of civilians go up every year. They've been on the rise even as violent crime has gone down. Police shootings of civilians goes up. So, yeah, I don't think that anybody feels, listen, there's going to be some kind of retribution and I'm going to be held accountable because the opposite is actually true.

Sure, some people get fired. They can go and get other jobs. They very rarely actually are penalized to the full extent of the law. And we know what really happens frequently. If it does go to court, then sometimes people are free and then it kicks off days of rioting, obviously. So, yeah, I think that it's very rare that there's a big penalty and everybody's afraid of being penalized.

Well, there used to be no penalty, and now in the last five years, we have seen five or six policemen go to jail for quite a long time. So I don't know if that argument really still holds. Is it not more about the attitude I feel like. With the police, and I know most police are good, even though we have a lot of bad videos, but I've certainly known cops personally known them and they are not bad people.

They're very good people. And it is a very difficult job. But it just seems like maybe we attract the wrong type sometimes. You know, the one who is going to make up for high school, they seem to be obsessed with this guy, seems to have done this, I think just because the crowd is saying stop doing it. So he's like, well, then then I'm not going to I'm in charge. It's always about recognizing my authority.

Is the essence to me of the police problem is bad attitude.

I get dumped in in New York City, in east New York, actually. And as I'm shooting that, the guy has been stopped by the police and and roughed up and had a case against them, literally, the police would do sort of Beuys in the street to kind of show off their power.

And I'm like, I literally would do a documentary on this very thing. So I do think there is a certain amount of power of listening to the authorities here. You see it a lot. And yes, I think it's a very stressful job, obviously, but also those few people who go off and get incarcerated, they are compared to the number of civilian shootings. Those are that's a small percentage. That's not a large number. Yeah, OK, let's about the economy, and you say that it's time to call what we're in now a depression surprise anyone was even question that.

Here are the latest 40 million claims for jobless benefits. Now, a third of small businesses do not expect to ever reopen. That's 40 percent African-American businesses I see in the paper today renters. I mean, this was so completely predictable. People who rent, you know, they're not rich people, so they're living paycheck to paycheck anyway. Now, no paychecks have been coming in. They're getting thrown out on the street.

So I don't know what to tell you. I always thought the response was too heavy handed is. What's going to look when the November comes around, who's going to get blamed for this economy? I think it's the people who are worthy. Let's shut everything down. Let's not even try anything Swedish like because the economy is probably going to be a bigger issue in November. What do you think?

There's no question that the narrative is going to be completely divided, depending on whose side you're on. And Trump is doing everything possible to represent the party of yes, I want to get your job back. I want to reopen. I want to try hydroxy chloroquine. I don't need to wear a mask. It's going to be OK. I mean, that's just a more fun place to be. And given that in the third quarter, we're going to have massive double digit unemployment, we're going to be facing a six to eight percent economic contraction for our country in twenty twenty.

But the trajectory is going to be positive. And I mean, this was the guy that was signing newsprint that showed that one day of the market popping after all the days that it was contracting like health, you know, he's going to send that message out there and he'll be effective with his base. The thing that I think is most important is we're going to be socially distancing come November time. And in the red states, you're gonna have a whole bunch of people that are going to be hearing this story.

You don't have to worry. You can come out and vote yes, OK? And in the blue states where they've actually been hit a lot harder in terms of numbers of death, the numbers of people that have gotten that have symptoms and the rest, they're going to have people saying, no, you've got to stay locked down. We've got a second wave that plays well for Trump. And that's also the reason, of course, the Trump administration wants to blame the Chinese really heavily for this.

He keeps doing it every day because the original sin came out of China. They covered it up for the first month. So it can't be Trump's fault. It's hard to blame Obama. Plausibly, though, he'll try. It's got to be evil, China and the potential that we'll be in a Cold War with the Chinese, the actual Cold War over the next few months, because that's a very useful thing to do.

Plus, it's bipartisan support for a hard line on China. That's something we're going to need to deal with for a very long time. I think Trump's biggest problem is going to be Trump's own sound bites, right. Where he in every press conference that is going to be fine. Got it under control. It's going to be OK. So that's his very first problem. And the problem with saying it's all going to be OK come November is that for most people it's not right.

There's no talking someone into it's going to be OK when you have everybody in the family has lost their job or it looks like you're going to be kicked out of your apartment or you're begging your landlord to let you stay yet another month because you can't figure out where to move. So no matter how you spin, that's going to be problematic. My question is, who's going to get the blame? Are people going to say, yeah, my business has been shut down and that's because the government shut it down?

I didn't volunteer to shut it down. I wanted to go back to work. I was willing to risk it or wear a mask or do this, or they should have figured something better out than just shutting me down. I feel like that's going to be a problem for the Democrats.

I think it's tough to be the party of no. I think it's you don't want to be in a box on this. You want to tell people that there are safe ways and you want to get back. But what's going to be really tough is that the last few months at least, relief has been made available for the small businesses and the individuals losing their jobs and the rest. And I don't know that we can keep that going through November. And if that and obviously the polarization is going to get much, much greater if it turns out that money isn't there, even though you have 40 million people out of work, millions will be coming back to work.

That's the narrative they're going to want to play. But I worry that our government is going to feel a lot more broken in October time. And that's that's going to be tough for Trump.

All right. I got to say, I don't support that. Right. The polls. So people actually don't want to go back to work fully until they feel like it's safe. And that comes down to a plan. And that comes down to a president who has no plan, whose leadership is is not even bad.

It's just a huge mess. It's a disaster. So I don't I don't see it as people saying it's the Dems fault. They're going to say, listen to the president who we knew was a disaster and for many people continue to be a disaster. Well, now now a pandemic shows up and he drops the ball in a myriad of ways and he now holds holds this.

I think that's going to be, I think, looking to blame it all on something that isn't me. This is the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. And we're in for four plus months in. And so far, Trump's approval ratings are flat, like I'm in right now.

The president is down fifteen points in Germany. Merkel is up to 80 right now. But the interesting thing about our society is so divided that the ability to spin this. So it actually only feels that way for people that already hated Trump. I wouldn't underestimate.

I got to leave it. We got to leave it there. I got to leave it there. I'm sorry. This Arctic. And for all the panel, a resume, but you are both great, thank you for inaugurating our resume panel and hope to see you in the flesh very soon. OK, thank you very much, Soledad.

OK, so on the panel, we were talking about, the white woman in Central Park who called the cops on the black man who was complaining that she didn't have her dog on the leash. And people have called this woman, Karen. This is a new term, but not a new concept. We've had clueless white girl. And Becky, I think is in this tradition, it's a woman, a white woman of privilege, sometimes racist. It's hard to define.

So we thought we would as a public service for any middle aged white women who wonder, maybe I am McCarren tell you sometimes these are the signs you might want to look out for, that you might be a cat. For example, in high school, you were voted most likely to make a citizen's arrest.

Yeah, that would be one.

You park in the handicapped spot because of a gluten intolerance blew you threatened to call immigration during a pedicure.

When you're at the baseball stadium and your team loses, you demand to speak to the manager.

When Samuel Jackson says what's in your wallet, you pepper spray the TV. That's a definite. So you go on a Facebook rant about how the Asian section in the supermarket keeps getting bigger.

You repeatedly cancel Hubers until you get a driver with a normal name, and when a friend says, this is my fiancee, you say this is America, dammit, speaking English.

All right, here's a comedian who wrote this, the comedian, let me tell you folks, you've never seen Jay Leno live your fuck because now there's no shows. But if they ever come back, there's no better monologist ever has been funnier. Gives you more belly laughs. He is also the host of NBC's Jay Leno's Garage, airing Wednesdays at 10:00. I think he used to have a show on NBC for a while. Their late night. Jay Leno is here.

Hello, young people. Oh, hey, Bill. Jay, I see the blue collar. Every man that you are, you're in your car garage.

That's right. I'm working on my car to ours. You put your palm up to the camera like that. Look, look, look, look at that. Looks like a puppy's car. You've never held a wrench in that hand in your whole life.

No, it's OK if they held, right. Yeah.

I'm guessing you're using a Dove Beauty bar. This is Laba with hummus. Right.

OK, well I'll check that out next time I go to my car garage. But Jay, look people, your beloved. That is the truth. Everybody loves you. America cares about you. So there's a pandemic. We want to know you're in danger. You're in your late 70s now. Right.

So you are. I am. I am seventy now. Oh are you. Ah well gosh your hair is going to be turning white any day. Listen Jay, how are you faring with it. Are you staying one step ahead of this virus? I am.

I'm trying to follow news on it. Like I'm sure you saw this doctor. Where was he? In San Bernardino or Riverside. And it's a real doctor, and he said this coronavirus is not that serious and we don't need to wear masks. Well, it turns out his brother is the one in five dentist who does not recommend his patients. So apparently in the family.

That's ridiculous. Point to point to make sure. No, no. You know, I'm taking cautious. I mean, I went to the doctor, you know, I went for a prostate exam and he said to me, hey, you're wearing you're already wearing a glove. You do it.

So that's kind of where I am because you had the glove on. That's right. He said, turn your head and don't cough. That's very funny.

And what do you think about Trump taking that hydroxy chloroquine? I mean, he's so indestructible. I would say he's a city roach. You know, he talks to me.

The problem with hydroxy chloroquine is I think it's a gateway to Lysol.

That's right. What do you think about think of it.

But one leads to the other, you know, but, you know, they're saying now that the virus does not live on surfaces. It's interesting because so much that we as with every news story, so much that you find out at the beginning, they then say, oh, no, we were wrong about that and we can live on plastic for up to three days.

So if you're in Beverly Hills, don't touch the women you're just making jokes about. I'm trying to get a bill out.

You know, it's turning ugly in Beverly Hills. It's got to do with the coronavirus itself, the Botox and whatnot. People can't get it. Well, you know.

You know what, Mr. Blue Collar, I want to ask you about that. Yeah, I see this phrase all the time on TV and in the news. We're in it together. But I think a lot of people feel like, well, for the richer people, this was a staycation. But the poorer people now are getting some truth to that.

I mean, I have to say, for me, there are some advantages. You know, like I said to my wife, honey, I'd love to take it to the vegan restaurant, but it's against the law. I'll stop in and get some burgers and bring them home like we have every night for the last sixty nine days. Right.

Well, what about that burger thing? I hear that there's going to be a meat shortage and that those are already problems in the pipeline.

Well, you know, the interesting thing about that is I saw this guy talking about global warming, which, of course, issue was all, but he said we have to do something to stop cow flatulence. And I said to myself, I can't even stop my own flatulence and I eat cow.

So what happens to me? You know, so it's a big problem. Well, you know, the biggest problem, the whole world is upside down and it's a bank the other day and they call the cops on me. You know why I was the only one in there?

Not one not wearing a mask because the robbers got the money. I see what you're saying now, Jay, you're asking about the big problem. I mean, this economy where I was talking earlier to my Zoome panel there about the economy is in a place we really haven't seen even before. A man of your age, his lifetime, the nineteen thirties, we saw twenty five percent unemployment.

Now it is getting bad. The economy in Beverly Hills actually schoolboy's are actually cleaning pools now. That's how bad.

You mean they're not servicing housewives. They're actually going to blow, you know, Neiman Marcus. It's now Neiman Costco. Oh wow.

And fact, I went to a wine tasting in Beverly Hills over the weekend and the way it worked, it had to spit it out into the glass of the guy next to you. That's how that that is saving money. Next thing I'm going to tell me that Keebler is laying off the elves. Jay, do you have one of your famous bad jokes that you can do is a bad joke right now?

It's a bad joke. It's I mean, a dumb joke to jump in a pandemic like this.

A good dumb. Joe, you went one way, you went out there. Go ahead, speak again, I hear you. Two guys go to the beach and they go, look, let's go see if we can meet some girls, OK? That's great. You go that way. But one guy comes back, sees and he said, I got three phone numbers, he goes on about me, how do you do that? I could tell, but I can't meet women.

I'm not like you. I just don't have that gift. I'm going to tell you a trick, OK? And this is guaranteed. But what's the trick? Go to the grocery store, get a potato. Put the potato in your bathing suit and walk around the beach, the girls go nuts because that works guarantee. Two of them go to the beach and say, guys, guys are walking on. This guy comes back at 3:00, both on the had to make was terrible, it was worth it to run it away.

I said potato in the front. I was right, that is a bad joke, but very bad. It's very funny. So first thing I want to say to you is this, you know, your show is really terrific. You're started your new season. And, you know, some of the guests you have on are just so stellar. Last season, you had a John Travolta and Matt Damon in your head. You know, you're Kevin Hart.

I saw on there Keith Urban.

We have Elon Musk the other night. Elon Musk. Blake Shelton. Right.

Blake my phone never seems to ring for this show, Jay, after all the years I had listed.

No, that's why I can't let you have my number. And somehow I why don't I make the cut for Jay Leno's garage?

You should come on Jay Leno's garage. Well, that's what I'm saying is I've never been asked.

Oh, well, I'm asking you now. I think you'd be good. Well, sure. Now that I shamed you into.

Cause you get to do on national television. Great. When can I show up?

Well, we'll talk about that after the show. No, tell me now, Jay, what should I be there? Well, I'll be there in the morning. I'll get up for it.

Well, we're not we're not taping right now because of the coronaviruses, but I'll be the first in line. OK, all right.

Can I give you an example of price gouging that I've seen? We are sure the 99 cent store is now accusing the dollar store gouging.

Once again, a ridiculous remark.

And that's all you can do is sit around here buying out chunks. I mean. You know, in Beverly Hills now, a lot of women are marrying guys just for love. This has never happened.

Oh, that sounds like a Beverly Hills drug that you sort of put in your Beverly Hills hunk, but you're forgotten now. You're throwing it in at the end.

That's right. See, that's why, you know, Forbes magazine annual list of the 400 richest Americans. Yeah. Two hundred of them have already moved back in with their parents.

Well, that's not very rich at all. No, no, that's what I'm saying. It's not good.

All right, Jack, thank you very much for making it my own show and being thrown out.

Me and the nation laugh, and we will see you very soon. The story of my friend Jay Leno. I'll be on your show soon. He will be on.

All right, it's time for Newroz. New rules everybody knew well, from now on, all weddings should be zom weddings. I'm not saying there's anything positive about this pandemic, but not having to fly to North Carolina to stand on a beach in a tuxedo comes pretty close. If you ask me, the perfect destination for any wedding is my couch.

Well, if you need to go to church this badly, just go, ma'am. I don't know what you're confessing to, but this is not safe, not because of the virus or the priest is in the middle of the street, but because he's within 500 feet of a school.

Neuro check, please. Is this really the future of dating? This does not look fun. It looks like someone forgot to take Barbie and Ken out of the packaging. Do you have protection is a question that should come at the end of the night.

At the beginning, a new rule. In order to save time, hardcore Trump supporters must merge all of their insane conspiracy theories into a single unified omnibus of batched. So here it is deplorable. Listen, I'm only going to say once the deep state helped Obama fake his birth certificate so we could wiretap Trump Tower and frame anyone who got in the way of Hillary's pizza parlor pedophile ring. But then Cunanan was on to us.

So we activated our army of three million illegal voters and had Joe Scarborough murdered Jeffrey Epstein so the U.N. wouldn't find out that Windmill's cause cancer. Neuro people must do something other than banging pots and pans to set off fireworks to show their appreciation for essential workers. Trust me, the last thing that people who work want to deal with after a 12 hour shift is noise. If you really want to show them you care, shut the fuck up and let them get some sleep.

And finally, new rule, someone has to tell me if we can do this now, why can't we do this? People have started flying again and some planes have been packed. Why is American Airlines safe but not American Airlines arena? Viruses like concerts, but. Are afraid of flying. Then how about we have a concert on a plane? Maybe Elton John could lend us his old tour plane and one with the organ on board, would that make a concert safe?

And if it happened at 30000 feet in a cabin filled with recycled coughs and farts while involuntarily spooning with the guy in 30 to be. Look, I'm glad the airlines are back in business. I'd like to see everybody back in business. And if folks are willing to take precautions and accept a small risk so life can go on, I say let that be our guide. The White House press corps is allowed to cover Trump's briefings, and, of course, they should.

That's where we learn the drinking motor oil cures AIDS. But if Donald Trump is allowed to do his comedy act with an audience. Why can't I? This reopening has no consistency in L.A. You still can't legally get a haircut, but you can get your dog's haircut. So he doesn't look stupid in his own meetings. Museums are typically spacious and very low risk. Why are they closed, but you can sweat and sway in a church. We're not supposed to congregate, but that's literally called a congregation.

Georgia re-opened massage parlors before restaurants, which only makes sense if the massage parlors serve waffles and the Waffle House gives happy endings.

Across America, parks are open again, but park restrooms are not, so what move over bears, it's our turn to shit in the woods.

It also seems like there's a different set of rules for single people, no one bats an eye if you live with family members who are coming and going. But if I'm your friend who's not part of the family steps inside the house, break out the hazmat suits. Here's an interesting fact about viruses. They don't recognize marriage and sharing a mailing address does not confer immunity. And we're not questioning any of this, which is a problem.

Does anyone in charge of health in this country have any idea how much less healthy an airplane is than a baseball game?

Let me help you out. Researchers studied 70 300 covid cases in China and found just one that was connected to outdoor transmission. Yeah, you've heard people use the phrase sunlight is the best disinfectant. Well, that got to be a metaphor because it was true. The virus doesn't like sun like Rudy Giuliani. But humans do like sun and needed there is a strong correlation between vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates, science daily reports on research that shows it might be as high as cutting the mortality rate in half.

Well, vitamin D is something you get from the sun, not your phone screen. Outdoors, healthy.

Unabomber lifestyle, not healthy. Why haven't our top health officials been emphasizing these things, why haven't they given us any direction on improving our immune systems at a time when we need them the most? Imagine before the virus even existed telling your doctor, hey, doc, I've been locking myself indoors, living in fear day, drinking and eating cheap takeout. Good health care plan.

The vacuum in leadership isn't Trump alone. Yes, he puts the cluster in cluster fuck. Yes, he is the worst leader the world has seen since Idi Amin stopped eating the voters. But in late January, Dr. Fauci said the coronavirus was, quote, a very, very low risk to the United States. It isn't something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about.

On January twenty third, Trump got a briefing from U.S. intelligence and he claims they underplayed the danger then. But The New York Times points out that Trump ignored a host of warnings he received around that time from high ranking government officials, epidemiologists, scientists, biodefense officials, other national security aides and the news media about the virus is growing threat.

So all those people knew it was a threat by then. But Dr. Fauci was saying very, very low risk. In in March, Foushee told 60 Minutes there's no reason to be walking around with a mask. Well, there was and he is now. That month, he also said, if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise ship. Look, I think Dr. Fauci is honorable, smart and sincere.

But I also thought that about Robert Mueller and I worry liberals are once again falling into the same trap of lionizing someone just because they're the anti Trump.

Even before the virus, America had a far too chronically sick population, which is one reason we've lost so many. Now we need to demand something better than how the entrenched medical establishment manages symptoms but cures and heals far too little. All right, that's our show. I want to thank my guests, Ian Bremmer, Soledad O'Brien, Tom Colicchio and Jay Leno. We'll be back next week. Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10:00 or watch him any time on HBO. On demand for more information, log on to HBO Dotcom.