Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Oh, please. I appreciate it. Thank you. Doing all the protocols. Thank you. I know you. Yes. I hope you're excited. It's 11 days till the election year, 11 days. I think the country is focused on one thing. Jeffrey Toobin jerked off on it.

So did you see that now? OK, well, let me tell you what happened, that Jeffrey Toobin, he's a big CNN analyst. He's like the legal guy. The Supreme Court said this word whacking during a zoo meeting in front of his colleagues. You're grossed out. Jesus Christ. He's been a guest on the show. I had to shake his hand.

So many growers think this week Trump just threw the Trump believable. Turns out he has a secret Chinese bank account and he's paid two hundred thousand dollars in taxes there. I was absolutely shocked. Trump paid taxes.

Well, he's always said, I pay taxes, it just wasn't in this country, you know. Did you watch the debate last night? We finally had another. Oh, you did? Oh, I mean, was it just me, my TV? It looks like the color of Trump's head was even for him. Was he look like roast beef?

I was just like Biden was debating Arby's. I was disconcerting.

But we did last night we discovered the monster's weakness, the mute button, the mute button, just the threat of it kept Trump in check.

It was like fired of Frankenstein or garlic to Rudy Giuliani, you know. Oh, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, there's a new Borat movie, I think it starts tomorrow, and Rudy Giuliani is in it because it's an actress, you know, part of the Borat troupe there. She's posing as a conservative reporter, luring Rudy up to his hotel room, which he does. And he's lying there on the bed while she flirts with him and he's got his hand reaching into his trousers.

Now, Rudy says it's not what it looks like, not what it looks like. It looks like an alien autopsy is what it looks like.

But but this, of course, I love this because it comes on the heels of last week, Rudy was in the news because he was digging up dirt on Hunter Biden after, of course, the whole Ukraine thing where it was digging up dirt on Joe Biden, because that's what you want, looking into high tech corruption in the former Soviet Union, someone who can get fooled by Borat.

Now, Rudy Rudy denies the whole thing. He claims he was tucking in his shirt and Jeffrey Toobin said, could I use that now?

Rudy's what a piece of work. He claims he works for Trump for free, but never takes any money. He says it's only compensation if he gets to eat the flies that land on Mike Pence.

That's the oh oh. And finally, I said to this, the pope every once in a while or the pope comes through. He's in ft came out in favor of civil unions for gay couples, which is pretty hard for the pope.

All I have to say is who's the lucky cardinal? All right, we've got a great show. We have Heidi Heitkamp and Anthony Scaramucci are here. And a little later we'll be speaking with Matthew McConaughey. But first up, he is the author of OMG, what the fuck does the ATF does the Constitution actually say a non boring guide to how our democracy is supposed to work.

Ben Sheehan, Ben. Once you get near my house, I'm just kidding. So, listen, I'm so glad you're here and I, I really mispronounced it. I said, OMG, and then I went right to what the fuck? But it's WITF. And those letters don't even really correspond to what we think they are, though. It works both ways, obviously. Oh, my God. What the fuck? It's also Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida.

Because those are the key states. Right. OK, so we have a lot in common theme wise. We both went on and on for a long time. I have anyway, I don't know about this problem we have in America.

Honor system, so much that we depend on, has not actually been written down in law or the Constitution, and now we have someone who has no honor. Puts his family in office, gets help from foreign countries, runs a business empire while he's president, things we didn't think we had to write down, right. So my worry now is that the Electoral College, it's not actually written down that the electors, which really elect the president, go to the guy who gets the most votes in the state.

Right. I mean, to start, it's you only have have 17 states that don't bind their electors, including states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and Texas, building behind me, make them follow the popular vote in the state. So that's one thing that's not been done. They leave it up to the states and that's what the Supreme Court decision earlier this year said, that it is constitutional to have a faithless elector laws and also for states to decide not to have that.

But so much of the Electoral College is is is set in the Constitution. But a lot of the actual process that's going to happen over the next two months is set by federal law and even the federal law that describes it. People could barely understand this. Section 15, written in eighteen eighty seven is constantly debated. It's almost unintelligible. And so my worry is if we get to this point where we have the electoral count that happens on January 6th, there's going to be disputes and it could go haywire.

What is the likelihood, though, that some state, at least one state does not send to the Electoral College to meet, to actually elect the president does not send electors that represent who won that state? I think there's a high probability. I don't think it's a high probability, but I've thought a lot of things over the last four years didn't have a high probability of that happening so well.

One thing we know for sure, the one thing we know for sure is that however much Trump loses by and look, I'm not saying sanguine last time, and I'm not this time, but this time, you know, last time I did not predict he would win. Would lose. This time, I'm saying he will lose, but that's just the popular vote and probably the Electoral College, what I know will not happen is the next day Donald Trump saying, I congratulate Joe Biden and I've instructed my staff to make a smooth transition.

The best man won. And this is our system that will never happen, right?

That I'm not. So he'll lose big and then go apeshit about that is my prediction, what will apeshit entail? Well, my worry is the less that his apeshit and more of the people who are around him who know the system, because what's going to happen over the next few weeks is you have obviously the election on November 3rd, but then you have until December 8th. If there's a if there's a controversy in a state or there's a recount or claims of male voter fraud or whatever it is, there is this opportunity for states to choose to decide a different way to appoint the electors.

And as long as they act on it by December 8th, they could make it go differently from the popular vote. So we have to pay attention to our state legislators in that period to make sure that they follow the popular vote in the states so that we don't have a popular vote in the state that's different from the electors.

So I'll make a prediction for me. I don't think the election will be decided November 3rd. I don't you don't know, give me a predicted date. But you think somebody will make a call?

I hope it's on. I'll say, after the safe harbor date, which is what I just described. So I'll say December 9th, I hope no. And I hope that by December it'll be between November 3rd and December 9th. They're recounting December, if they could. I mean, it is it's going to courts. You think a lot. I mean, it could.

I mean, I think that in a state like Texas or a state like Georgia, you know, because they don't bind their electors like there is that wiggle room for it to go haywire. So so what happens on December 9th? Do you think somebody will call it for a vote?

Well, the electors will have to be finalized on that on that date if they choose a different method. So we'll know by December 9th. And then the actual vote is on the 14th and then the actual counting of the electoral votes is on January 6th. And Mike Pence is overseeing that.

Yeah, but he can't do anything about it.

But again, the law is super unclear from eighteen eighty seven. So if if it got really close and it's not a binding blowout, then you could have some complication that happens at that meeting. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it's important to know where the guardrails are versus what.

OK, so I say things go Biden's way in December 9th. They declare he's the winner, but Trump is not going to accept that. No. Right. So what happened between December 9th and January 20th when he's supposed to leave? I mean, I've heard Joe Biden say, you know, the United States government is perfectly equipped to escort a trespasser out of the White House at that moment. He's the government. All right. That's the problem. He's still the government until he says different.

Yeah, I mean, it is we've never had a situation. We've gotten close. We had a situation in 1876 where it got two days before inauguration and they were literally planting parallel inaugurations. They finally ended up having the winner, Rutherford B. Hayes, win by one electoral vote. But we've never had a situation where it's gotten to Inauguration Day and the person has refused to leave. So how do we fix this in the future? I mean, a constitutional amendment takes two thirds right of the two thirds of the House and the Senate to propose it.

Both the House and the Senate. So supermajorities in both. And that's a lot. That's 67 percent, which never happens for anything we can't agree on, plus three fourths of the state, three fourths of the states. So you need 38 states to. It sounds to me like we could never really have a constitutional amendment again, that that is not really going to happen.

Well, there are two ways to work around this with the Electoral College. So one is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And right now you have 15 states that have signed on for a total of one hundred ninety six electors. That's not going to happen in enough states to tip the balance to 270 by this election. But you could in the future. The other state, the other thing that you could do in the future is have states not give a winner take all electoral votes, because right now you have states that are just guaranteed to go blue.

And it doesn't. The people who aren't voting for the people who are voting Republican in California, their vote for president isn't really going to matter. So you could switch it where every state has the ability tomorrow if they wanted to change their their laws so that it's proportional rather than winner take all.

All right. Well, I'll be praying with you. Just kidding. All right. Thanks very much. Let's meet our panel. Good job. To see everybody very distance, Anthony, how are you doing? OK, here's the former White House communications director under President Trump and host of the podcast Saul Talks on Salt.

Anthony Scaramucci is over here now. He gets a big round of applause because he's OK. She's the former Democratic senator from north. Not an easy thing. A Democratic senator from North Dakota. Pretty, pretty good. And co-founder of the organization One Country Project, Heidi Heitkamp is back with us. Great to see. There's so much going on, there's so many of the week stories I could go into and I probably should, but you know what? I'm at the end of my rope, at the end of the I'm just going to talk about what I want to talk about.

Not that I don't really do that every week anyway. But here's the thing. I was watching 60 Minutes Sunday and then the story on the flight from hell. Have you seen this story? Let me tell the people what it is, because they don't know what I'm talking about. But the question I want to get to is, why can't America get its shit together anymore? Here's what happened in March. Two hundred Americans right when the pandemic was starting and we'd been talking about it for months to Americans going on a cruise ship.

So right away, I'm at Americans are morons, OK, but so they get on the coast, along the coast illumined Nusa Luminoso, which cut to it's a petri dish, of course. So then the State Department has to get them off the ship, sends a chartered plane to get back to Atlanta because that's where the CDC is, the plane. It's, of course, the flight from hell. People are literally passing out in the aisles. Everyone on the planes got to.

So it lands. And they radioed the tower and they say, nobody told us you were coming. And sits on the tarmac for three hours and they let him in. Check them a little bit, disperse them out to the busiest airport in the world, hit the food court, get your connecting flights, I mean, you couldn't design a system better to super spread this disease into America. Why are we such a loser country now? What is it with the people of this country?

Are they stoned or are they stupid or are they disillusioned? Is it all three?

You couldn't communicate. The plane was coming in and you let them all out. I mean, why are I requested back?

I just want to make sure it's there, right? I mean, you're a Wall Street superstar. What do you think? But I mean I mean, there's fragmentation of information. You've got people politicizing mass. The president is politicizing. He tried to make it into not big. That big of a deal. You've got 40 to 50 percent of the people I'm asking about the people.

Why do they look around? Can't somebody just hold the balance claims coming in? Nobody can. How did that message not get through? I'm talking about basic shit. You can make all those political arguments. It's fundamental. They would just ignore incompetence. It's incompetence, not on the people on the ground.

It's fundamentally incompetent. State Department, what the hell were the State Department doing?

Everybody should remember this when Pompeo offers himself up to America to be the next president of the United States, he's been incompetent since day one.

This whole thing has been mismanaged since day one. Shouldn't surprise anyone. No.

I mean, Trump, of course, has the personal beliefs of those people or is to ignore stuff like that.

That's that's just the personal beliefs of who whoever it is, the air traffic controller, the people that would bring believe it.

It's not about a set up to being believed. It's this is information. This plane is coming in with these sick passengers. Be ready for it to handle it like they would in a normal country. But something is wrong that's beyond Trump.

Yeah, there's no question. I was this systemic imbalance.

I was in Africa during Ebola and they tested you more heavily in Africa when you came in their country and left their country in development in the developing world. He has never taken this seriously. And to stop people and test people, that means you're failing.

And he would never it's personal for him personally for the president.

Once again, his fuckups not in dispute, but somebody's going to have to answer this question about America at large also because it wasn't up to him to just be on the ground and at the CDC and the airlines and all this shit. People are just a big domino, Bill.

He's the big so he's the biggest domino tipping into everything else.

Yes. But it's a danger to just blame everything on that and not look at this. There's no question we have a system.

Maybe this will convince you. Twenty five percent of all Americans now believe Q Kuhnen. I mean, it was only two years ago when I first made fun of it and we were like, oh, this is hysterical.

I'll say I am who I am because it's such a strange thing. And now it's not a fringe thing. It's twenty five percent. There's going to be congresspeople who are kuhnen. If you don't know what Kuhnen is. Here's the question. The twenty five percent of Americans agreed to and by the way, another twenty four percent, not sure. Maybe they said to the question, do you believe top Democrats are involved in elite child sex trafficking rings? This is the Hillary ran a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor, 25 percent of Americans, another twenty four percent.

Not sure that that might be true. Biden has to run for office, factoring in that a good part of the populace thinks he's a pedophile. Yeah, discuss. OK, so the the main thing about that is there's a lot of disenfranchised people. They feel the system is not work for them. They can't blame themselves. So they they buy into conspiracy theory. And then you have another group of people that are preying on them. And one of them happens to be the president, United States.

And so he lights people up. He's retweeting things about the bin Laden.

So they think that's you're saying that people think the fix is in, that the system is rigged. Why the rich people get richer. Exact Prince Andrew, he come on. He is on Sex Island. And the British people do get whatever is throwing.

There are flame logs on it. He's retweeting false bin Laden raid conspiracies and he's retweeting Q and on. And then he says that he denies it and there's good. Twenty five percent of the people that went from economically aspirational is blue collar people to economically desperation. All right. Now three decades and they they get ignited by a bill.

I mean, I, I disagree. I think that if you had had the Internet when I was a kid, instead of reaching for the Enquirer and reading about aliens or reading about some craziness, you know, maybe only five percent of the people saw that story. Now. Twenty five percent of the people are seeing the story. There are some people who just do not have the ability to use critical thinking.

And that's the bigger problem in this country. If you know, you can you can talk about whether they're disenfranchised. It doesn't be being poor doesn't make you stupid, right. Being poor doesn't doesn't get you in that spot. Being rich makes you stupid a lot more often. That's true. Not really.

Rich people don't have to think right because they're rich to be critical thinking is what we really have to focus on.

And also, how is it that you're entering my first question now about why the why we fucked up so bad with the cost of a virus ship? Well, but but think about that.

We don't educate anymore. We don't think anymore. We don't we don't know. Right. This is the answer.

Yeah, no, but but but on the virus.

And I will stand up for the people at the air traffic control or the people at the if they were not told. Here's your protocol when they come off. And that was the State Department's responsibility. You saw those lineups. Remember when we brought the planes back from Europe and there were people jammed waiting to get through customs and they weren't even tested then. So never mind that experience. We continue that experience all along. That's how we spread the virus in this country.

And to to simply say, oh, we shut down the Chinese. No, you didn't. You brought people in here who were contaminated and and tested positive but never tested them.

But if a quarter of the country and half of Trump people think that the Democrats are pedophiles and Satanists, but also state and some and also they believe in lizard people drinking blood, drinking the right, eating babies. I mean, like like you couldn't eat the Enquirer. John Kennedy still alive, though.

That's the good news, right? So JFK Jr.. Yeah.

Yeah, right. OK, so, I mean, if Biden wins, what are we going to do with these people?

And if Trump wins, what are they going to do to us because they believe in the storm, you know, which is a moment when everyone realizes all this stuff and then they arrest a hundred thousand people.

I'll be definitely in an undisclosed location. OK, let me zoom into the show.

I think I don't think those are the dangerous people. I mean, I know stupidity is a is a cancer on our society that many of you know is not dangerous. You know, who is the dangerous people? Are the people who stood in the state House in in Michigan, the people who plotted to.

You don't think these are the same people? I don't. You don't. I don't know. You don't think those are cute people?

No, I don't. I think those are militia. Those are Posse Comitatus. Those are. And they're not.

There's no no crossover nation.

But but but you've got to remember that these groups, No. One, these groups are not all monolithic. Right. That look at what their belief system is. And the poor boys, I mean, they're basically misogynistic. You know, people say they're they're you know, they're racist. No, they don't like women. And that should worry us, too.

That should about their willing accomplices like McConnell, McCarthy and guys that know better. Cotton, all these guys know better and they sit there is willing accomplices to all of this nonsense feeding it day in and day out. Yeah, they're the most dangerous because they're smarter and they're using that system to manipulate people.

All right. Well, listen, masturbation is in the news. This you I feel bad about it.

Constantly making fun of Jeffrey Toobin. But, you know, what would you do what he did? You know, people are going to make fun, especially comedians, OK? And I just see the name Tubin. To me, it really lends itself.

It's like, you know, because I think it will probably be a word in itself in the future. Meaning to masturbate during a zoo meeting. As in that meeting was so boring, I was Tubin the whole time, you know? So, Sam, I realize, you know, every year the dictionary they put out like the list of new words that are neologism. They call it new words that come into the language. And with this year and covid, there's going to be a whole list that are just related to pandemic living like Tubin.

And we define some of the elements like the practice of bumping elbows instead of shaking hands is funny.

Funnybone You see, that's what shoppers experience when they actually find Clorox wipes is called a store orgasm, not someone during a covid test who says let me do it myself, then gets the cutest stuck in his nose.

That's a nostro dumb ass.

That's an Anthony. Oh, getting airlifted to a hospital for treatment unavailable to the public. That's called health care. When you're scared to even think about how long you've been wearing the same underwear are frightening whiteys.

And when a wife gets so drunk on her Zoome happy hour, she even has sex with her husband. That's a shot in L.A..

OK, so. Did you watch the debates, both of you, last night? I thought Trump showed me at least he can modulate when he must be very scared because he usually doesn't. But he was trying and he there was part of it that looked almost like a normal debate. I had this little glimmer of nostalgia, like when they talk about minimum wage, it was just like a normal. The Republican said that wrap the day boys had about, oh, it's going to cost small businesses and, you know, the people will get fired and the Democrats and the Democrats.

Yet I was like, oh, this is so normal. And then I was reading this thing today that Ludwig Institute says the full the. Real unemployment rate is twenty six point one, it's listed as seven point nine, because if you take everybody who has a part time job at once, a full time job, everybody who has no job and everyone is just given up twenty six point one, that's what it was in the Depression. That's the real unemployment in America.

What are the repercussions of that? What's the remedy for that? Well, I think the repercussions are that all of a sudden you're going to see a spiral downward that's that you won't be able to contain. Which is why getting this stimulus package is absolutely essential as soon as possible. There is no way we can recover without an increase in federal investment. But beyond that, it has shown the fault lines in our democracy, the inequality. I could give you a number that overlays that that basically shows that the bottom quartile are going to spend that much more time recovering.

And as the rich people who are the stock markets just fine for them, they can zoom from home. They're doing OK. They're going to continue to get wealthier and wealthier. And those poor folks at the bottom never catch up. We need systemic capitalism reform in this country to stop what's happening right now.

What do you say to that, Mr. Wall Street? Well, I would say three things are that the Wall Street's getting its bailout. That's the narcotic of the Federal Reserve.

And the modern monetary theory of just continuing to Wall Street loves these covid bailouts because they get the money, they get the money. And so but but the second everything that's happening is you do have a safety net today that's different from the 2093 depression. So you have, you know, workers compensation. You have unemployment insurance, you have you have a safety net. We need to expand that safety net. Frankly, whether you're a capitalist or a socialist, it really doesn't matter.

We have to help those people, because if you don't do that, you're going to break down the social contract in the system.

And I think the senator is ultimately very right about this, that it's going to take a very long time for people that have got hurt in this thing to pull out of it.

And so things like Andrew Yang's Universal Basic Income, we have to look at that because the top down structure, bill, is not working, you know, funneling it through the Federal Reserve into the stock market, having the president champion that as his poll number is not working because you've got 45 percent of the people that are really devastated right now.

And every low wage worker in America is a subsidy to their employer. Is that, you know, when you talk about we need on this program or that program, guess what? You need to pay these folks more. You need to give them real economic opportunity.

And so when you when you say we're going to do this and do that and provide the earned income tax credit or universal income, guess what? That's a subsidy to people who are hiring people at seven twenty five and making millions of dollars themselves.

How do people live? They don't. They don't. They live.

They live with housing assistance. They live on food stamps. They live on Medicaid. And the president's trying to take that away, working people's health insurance. I mean, it's an atrocity and no wonder people are mad. They just have to get to the polls and vote vote there in.

But it doesn't. But will it really change?

That's the thing. I mean, here's the thing. The money that we already spent, I mean, that two point trillion was the first covid relief. Right. OK, that's an astounding number. I mean, even TARP, we were like, oh, my God, that was the 2008 was like seven hundred and eighty billion. And people were like, oh my God, in one swift stroke. And we went to two point to like the New Deal, all told, cost eight hundred and fifty six billion adjusted.

The Marshall Plan was one hundred and forty four billion. I mean we are into some crazy numbers and it doesn't get to the people. This is our fundamental problem besides stupidity, greed, and that every snout is in the trough.

Only 20 percent, only 20 percent went for relief and families it went to fucking Wall Street. 250 billion in tax breaks went to businesses, some of which were making more profits.

During the pandemic, you left out big tech, you know, because it's all slanting towards them, because if you look at there, they're that too.

Yeah, the Pentagon got a billion to prevent, prepare and respond to coronavirus. They spent it on space surveillance, jet engines and dress uniforms.

Well, just not to send you off the edge here, but North Dakota just took their covid relief money and they're giving it to people so that they can track. That is ridiculous. They took the money and gave it to fracking. Yeah. They're doing that right now. Listen to this one, a gas station and needles, I think that's Arizona, received one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the paycheck protection program. They spent it on Trump billboards.

You know, how can we even get behind spending money when we know it's not going to go where it's supposed to go?

That's my point. You could digitizer the money and drop it in everybody's bank account. And it's very clean, administratively clean. But you've got lobbyists and you've got politicians that are standing in the way and you've got very few politicians that will look into a camera and explain it directly to the American people.

Ross Perot was right all those years ago, wasn't he? He had the right issues, debt. And you got to kill K Street. Right.

And you have the crazy. What was the isn't in the basement.

Yeah. Yeah, no. And then he became like he was not a great politician, but yeah. It's he was he pretty.

It's not a swamp bill. It's a gold plated hot tub without a drain and they're sitting in their smoke and so, so, so think about this.

So but think about this. And then all the hand-wringing from people like Lindsey Graham about you can't get that extra six hundred dollars a week if you're on unemployment, who do you think is going to spend money in this economy? 70 percent of our economy is consumption.

If you don't get the money in the hands of the people who need things, you are not going to recover.

And so the wringing was atrocious, absolutely atrocious that people so concerned that someone's going to get six hundred dollars and then they wouldn't work for minimum wage. They won't go back to a minimum wage job, pay them more, pay them the six hundred dollars more. Yeah, so what are what about Americans, what are the citizens going to do if Trump doesn't leave or puts up a big fight or if he wins by voter suppression? That's how dictators around the world stay in office.

They have elections. They just rigged them. He's going I'll take the other side of that bet. This guy is a coward.

He's a keyboard warrior coward. He's never had a direct confrontation with anybody in his life.

Even when Chris Wallace was interviewed in the summer, he put up the tweets of Chris Wallace. He started, you know, kissing his ass, OK, he is a keyboard warrior coward. And he is going he's going to get routed in the next 11 days, which is a Scaramouch, I might add.

He's going to get destroyed. You've got 55 million people, 11 days, because that's how long you had that job. Just one longer than my last name in 2011. And now we're we're calling that a Scaramouche, Scaramouche. A fortnight is two weeks on this. Scaramouch is a lousy ambush. Then there's only two week vacation. Take a Scaramucci joke on me. All right. But he's going. He's going. He's going to get round it.

He's going to get routed. I don't know if he's going he's not going to go easily. It's not every two kicking and screaming the military. You want to turn a democracy into an autocracy. Need the military is the most hated commander in chief in the modern era.

You retired general or active duty officer likes this guy and go look at the enlisted.

I hope they dislike him. I hope you're right. But over the years, let's be honest, he's been awful to so many people who somehow stayed loyal to him, among them you because he was in power while.

Well, it also I was a lifelong Republican and I thought it was my duty to try to stay sober. But the people and there became a limit Republicans.

I understand that, Bill, but he's the commander in chief at that moment. I got even if they hate him, if he's like, well, I'm your commander in chief and I say I'm still the president because there's irregularities.

OK, well, I'm here on your show to help those people with an off ramp to get to reality and to where our democracy needs to be. And it's not him and he's got to go. I hope so.

And we're working tirelessly.

But I just would like to know if you think that American citizens are capable of a general strike like they have in France, too much in France. Always every time I've been in France, they were on strike.

I cannot get it back yet. You know, it's like they're either on vacation or they're on strike. But I mean, the whole country, they don't like something. The whole country just says, well, we're all stopping. Is is it would America do that?

You just said that the covid plane got I mean, we don't have that. I mean, stopping on purpose. I understand that. But we don't have that kind of community. We're so disparate in our country.

I don't know if you could unify us like that if were so disparate.

I don't know if you can unify us where everybody just universally goes on strike like they do in France. But I think a good 60 percent of the country wants Trump to go for it. We might find out as more than that. But that's a lot of people. If they got in the street, you know, I mean, we after well, after he was elected, we had the the Pussy Riot, no Pussy Riot, the pussy hats, the the the the women's the women's march right there.

Pussy Riot that banned in Russia. Pussy Hot is what they had a pussy had. And it wasn't a riot. Other than that, I'm fine. But, you know, it lasted a few days and everybody went home and it's not fair. But, you know, I applaud them. I wasn't there at all.

But they they went and then they started organizing. And let me tell you, in the in the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote, guess what's going to happen? Women started this movement the day after the inaugural and they're going to end it on Election Day and his ass is going out.

All right. We'll end on that positive. Is the Oscar and Golden Globe award winning actor whose new book is called Green Lights, Matthew McConaughey. Hey, how you doing? Good to see you. Ben. How are you doing? Thank you for doing this. Your book is fascinating. I tell you, for a guy who for so long was known as, you know, a beach bum who didn't own a shirt. You're a very deep guy.

You really are. So why don't you just start off by telling people what that title means? Because I think it's important to the book.

Yeah. So I been keeping a diary for 36 years and I finally got the courage to take those diaries away, to go see what they were. What I found in 36 years of writings were stories, people, places, prescribes poems, prayers and a whole lot of bumper stickers. Then I looked at those and I found this central theme of green light. I found that I got green lights in my life. The green lights are things that we we like.

They give us freedom. They say go. They affirm our way. I found that I created a lot of those in my life by choices I made. I found that in a lot of ways they were thrown in my lap and I got very fortunate and lucky and did good things with them. I also found that a lot of the yellow and red light to my life, crisis's hardships, death, my father, years abroad where I was lost, had green light assets in them that revealed themselves later in life.

Now, when we realized that there's a green light asset in a red or yellow light in our life is sort of relative. Sometimes we notice it in the moment, sometimes the next week, next week, sometimes we notice in our deathbed. But I do believe that eventually in the rearview mirror of life, all the green, all the yellow and red lights do eventually turn green.

Well, boy, you've got that down. Yeah, I mean, so much of the book, honestly. Do you remember that old sickies? Maybe it's still on commercial. The most interesting man in the world. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That I mean, the passages are like copy for the next most interesting man in the world. He he smoked peyote in Mexico in a cage with a mountain lion. And you did that. You were blackmailed into having sex at 15.

How does that even happen? I would have been the blackmailer at fifteen.

What do you want to tell me? As I as I wrote as I wrote in the book and I didn't get a whole lot of details on that. You know, I was raised thinking I wasn't going to lose my virginity until I was married. And at least if I did, I was going to be with someone that I had a really good relationship with. Well, neither of those happened. This girl was much older. And as I write in the book, I said I was very sure at the time that I was going to hell for the act.

And now I really hope that that is not the case. I'm really sure that I hope that's not the case.

Yes, you're caught. You are a philosopher. That's that's the interesting part. And you did something in your career that is very rare, which is you change the perception of yourself. That's the hardest thing to do in show business. You know, when you get a label on you, it sticks and you manage to find a way to not be the beach bum with the shirt off, you know, to be this guy. You want to tell the kid I want to do that?

Well, what happened was I was the rom com guy. I was the shirtless guy on the beach. That was fine. Yes, I said it then and I'll say it now. Those rom coms I was doing were paying the rent for the houses on the beach where I was shirtless.

Yes.

I never heard that part, but I did notice that that's all that I was in the public eye and that's all I was to studio financials in Hollywood, other roles. I wanted to do dramatic roles. They were not being offered. They were not an option for me. So at a time when I said I if I can't do what I want to do, I'm going to stop doing what I've been doing was a scary proposition. So check with my wife, check with my money manager and agent said I'm going to stop doing rom coms.

Well, guess what?

OK, that's all that came in for six months. I got a fourteen point five dollars million offer for one and that was harder to say no to because I got a little relative on that going really?

You're going to say no to this, which I finally did. And then for fourteen months after that, nothing came in. I called my agent because no, no one's even mentioned your name. So a 20 month sabbatical after twenty months of a sabbatical from Hollywood being gone, not seeing me shirtless on the beach, not seeing me in your living room or in a theater in a rom com. I became a new good idea. Where's McConaughey been? He forgot about it.

Well, guess who's a good idea? Not for Lincoln Lawyer Killer Joe Paper Boy Mud True Detective, Dallas Buyers Club, Magic Mike.

All right. I guess so. Back that movie, that one you turned down for fourteen point five. What was it and who did it?

I'm not tellin. And it didn't get it didn't get made.

OK, all right. So the other reason I think you were able to do it is you just have an innate likability, which is rare, but, you know, usually carries the day. It's interesting you talk about your big breakthrough time to kill the other guy who was up for it was the other actor, I think, in your generation who was the only one who has the same amount of likeability, which is our friend when my brother from another mother, brother from another.

Well, you know, you're both sons of Texas. You have this weird family history, which I'll get into in a minute. But you're sure he's not your real brother who is still debatable?

We still find out. My mom's got a story that makes us both think we just might be related.

Well, yeah. Let's just leave that hanging out there, because this is so interesting.

You were born to parents who are on each on their third marriage to each other. I've heard of people getting married twice. In fact, I Googled it. Lots of interesting, lots of really prominent, interesting, good people, Larry King, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Eminem did it. Richard Pryor did it. Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith did it. Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner.

Judge fucking Judy did it, overruled herself and married this. Twice, but your parents did it three times, you were married after this. So how do you think that affected you? Great question. Let me throw this out, Camilo, I'm now married to her parents, did the inverse of what mine did. They were married twice, divorced three times. They ended up divorced.

So we came into this going, hey, this whole marriage thing that our parents had, they way they've been really good lessons. If you can't live with you can't live without you. We're not rushing into this. Right.

But, you know, my parents liked their relationship being a tidal wave in the Pacific Ocean. I don't I didn't I didn't want to go marry someone like as much like my mother who needed that much resistance continually to get along. I want to keep the passion of passion relationship, but I like more of a slow moving river with some rapids along the way.

So it really didn't scare us away from marriage, but it made us take our time, maybe a little extra time before we decided, hey, this is what we want to do and we want to choose each other to spend our lives together with.

Well, it's interesting, you know, reading about your family violence was a big theme in your book, Violence followed by Love. You know, you talk about, you know, you love your father very much, but he whipped your ass and that there's a you describe a fight in the kitchen between your mother and your father like a bar fight with a knife and a broken bottle, and they wind up fucking on the floor. I mean, you talk about defending your father at a bar and he loved you for it because you got the out of you.

There's a lot. And then you have these dreams, this recurring dreams where you're surrounded by the most violent creatures in nature. The shark, right. The python, the crocodile. And then you come. It's a wet dream.

Yeah. Just not a nightmare. Well, everything you just said, look at what the outcome of each one of those was. They end up with love winning. My mom and dad get in a fight. They end up making love on the floor. My mom and dad get divorced twice. They end up being married. I have dreams that have the element of absolute nightmares by any practical look at it and they end up being a wet dream. The love in our family and the violence that was in our family and trust me, there was a much, much more compassion in good times and hugging and all of it getting along.

I tell these stories about our family that have to do with consequences and have some violence in them, because those were the times where the love that we have was tested the most but was never going to get beat. So I think that's why I adore these stories and tell them as love stories so much, because there are times when that love got tested, but the love is never going to be in question. The love is never going to lose the fight and it never did.

OK, well, listen, I'm looking forward to your third act whenever that's going to start, because I know you're a seeker and it'll be something different still. Thank you for doing this. Keep Austin where we'll do it next time. The kid. OK, now it's time for new rules, everybody, new rules. Okay. Girl, if you buy this silicone face slimer designed to stretch the mouth muscles, thereby slimming your face, you can't be surprised when your husband leaves you for a blow up doll.

Sophisticated humor, we do hear sophisticated neural never buy anything from an ad where a kid at breakfast says, Dad, you rock. If Dad actually rock, you'd be on tour doing blow and trashing hotel rooms.

Here's how you know he doesn't rock at 6:00 a.m. and he's cooking for you.

Role, the media must stop trying to scare us with bullshit horror stories about marijuana like this one man dies after pot plant liquefies his brain. Nice try, but where I come from, it'll liquefy your brain is a selling point.

That's not even a pot plant, douchebags.

Neural desu map has to change its name, boy, this poor guy, we fucking hit him at the beginning, we hit him in the middle and we hit him at the end.

Has to change its name to we can see your penis.

I realize that's a mouthful.

But apparently some people need reminding that if there's one thing nobody likes seeing on their computer, it's unwanted pop ups.

Well, someone must tell harmonica players that the reason they always have the blues is because nobody wants to watch someone play a harmonica.

Because it sounds like you're autotuning an asthma attack. And finally, new rule, an election is meant to eliminate candidates, not voters. Last week in Georgia, early voting in the wealthier white neighborhoods in Atlanta took just 15 minutes, barely enough time for the poodle in the car to get hot. But voters in some black areas stood in line for up to eight hours. In Texas, the governor decreed that there be only one ballot Dropbox's per county, which is fine for loving county population one hundred and sixty nine.

But Harris County, which includes the city of Houston and has two point four million eligible voters spread across an area larger than Rhode Island, also got one box in some states. You have to put your mail in ballot inside an envelope and then put that envelope into a second envelope and then sign the envelope.

It's like you're doing a magic trick for people who say both parties are basically the same.

Voter suppression is the stark example that that's not true. This is one hundred percent a Republican thing.

Yeah. They know their policies aren't as popular, so they came up with an effective, time tested political tactic called cheating.

I can't make you want to vote for me, but maybe I can keep you from voting for the other guy. That's their credo. Made the best man lose anyway. The other night, I was watching one of those obstacle course shows, you know, the ones where a contestant has to get across the terrain of a giant bouncy balls and slippery balance beams and swing on freaking ropes like Tarzan then occurred to me while watching this. Watching Ricardo lose his grip on a foam roller.

This is exactly what our voting system is turned into. It's American Ninja Warrior Democracy edition. Try to move forward without getting knocked off the voter rolls, match your wits and physical prowess in our most challenging steeplechase is like the eliminator where you show up to vote only to find your polling place has been closed.

Splish splash, you're taking a bath. Or then there's the excruciating where you finally find your polling place.

But the line is hours long because they've shut down. All the other polling places in your precinct has been given the old broken voting machines.

Oh. Kerplunk, the misidentifying where you finally get to the front of that line that you've been waiting in for hours and they tell you that you have the wrong idea.

No hope you can swim the monkey wrench where you say, OK, fine, I'll mail in my ballot only to find they remove the only mailbox in the neighborhood or.

Oh, and finally, brand new this year, try to stay dry when going up against the obstructer where you say, fuck it, I'll just drop off my mail in ballot at a designated drop off box, only to find there's only one for two point four million people.

It's amazing how brazen Republicans have become in owning voter suppression back in March, when Democrats were pushing for a vote by mail, same day registration and early voting, Trump because he's a poker player who always tells you his hand, said this would result in, quote, levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again. Well, not quite. But yes, more people vote for Democrats.

A process known as counting, David Lewis is a state rep from North Carolina. He was tasked with redistricting and he gave one of the most honest rationales for partisan gerrymandering, meandering you'll ever hear. He said, I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map in a way to help, huh? Well, it must have been such a relief for a cheater like that to stop pretending that there was a good reason for their cheating and just say it like when Mom finally admits that the Hitachi magic wand isn't for her back.

Well, here's my message to the cheaters I've always preached on this show that you can hate Trump, you can't hate his supporters. I meant it then and I mean it now. But that goes out the window. If you steal from me, my vote is a thing of value. You steal it. I do hate you because that's not.

That's not we see the world differently, our politics are different. That's you're a crook, a thief and a schmuck. Elections are supposed to be free and fair, not wet and wild. And if you wait eight hours to vote, when you get out of the booth, you deserve to do this.

All right, that's our show. I want to thank my guests, Anthony Scaramucci, Heidi Heitkamp, Matthew McConaughey and Ben, and we'll be back next week. Thank you very much, folks.

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