Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. Look at this, thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you. Spring has sprung here, huh? Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I can see the happiness, the enthusiasm, the love, because thank you and we are getting back to normal. I see it everywhere. The traffic is heavier. Restaurants are open. Republicans pretend to give a shit about the debt.

Again, it's I feel like any minute Pam Anderson could remarry Kid Rock and things are just. We're turning and listen to this.

The CDC, they said, you know, the distancing rule they have for kids, school kids, which has been six feet now three feet moving in the right direction in Florida.

The students are hopeful that by fall they'll be back inside their teachers. It's.

But but, of course, with us reopening, it brings other issues, we have a surge of migrants at the border and the authorities say we cannot take anymore any more unskilled foreigners who don't even seem like they want to work. We already have Megan and Harry.

And oh, that's good crowd, good crowd, good crowd. She gave out treats when they laugh at the laugh at the politically incorrect ones.

Good. But here's something interesting.

I read about the pandemic that were hopefully coming out of it during this last year. They say this survey found the average single person has been masturbating three times a day.

I don't know who this is exactly, I assume it's the guy in the room meeting who claims he's petting his cat, I assume. I know well, of course, this doesn't really reveal anything about human nature, we don't already know, but it does explain why Costco is always out of Kleenex.

But hey, Biden's kind of kicking ass, you know? Well, you know, his big thing was I'm going to get one hundred twenty. That was his big thing. I'm going to get one hundred million vaccines out in 100 years way at ninety seven million. Vaccines have got two million a day now from.

Trump said, oh, sure, if you want to show off government that tries.

Joe Biden promised 100 million and 100 days way ahead of that schedule.

Of course, you have to understand this is a guy who eats dinner at 5:00 p.m. So but one reason why they're doing so well with that is they expanded the list of who can give shots, dentists. Did you know that you're getting free medical students, midwives, midwives, anymore, more had those veterinarians and that I went to my vet? Oh, it's fine. It's a little different.

He gave me this shot and he put a cone on my neck, I.

But it's fine. I mean, yes, it was it's a little it's a little weird going to the vet for a shot at to trick myself to get into the car.

But other than that, it's a mutt. You've read this. People are figuring out ways to jump the vaccine lines. Oh, yeah. At Berkeley. Now you can get it.

If your spiritual advisor says you're an old soul, that seems wrong in L.A., get it. If your facial filler is still under warranty, that's. Speaking of facial filler, the Oscar nominations are out. Are you excited about that? Yes. The leading contenders for best picture are a no man's land menary and the sound of metal.

So for theaters who are trying to figure out how to reopen at 15 percent capacity, I think we found the answer.

All right. We've got a great show. We have Heidi Heitkamp is back here over the last week. Good show. But first up, he's a former a former data scientist with the 2012 Obama campaign who is now the head of data science at Open Labs, David Shorr David.

Let's let's set you up for the people who may not know who you are. Data scientist, I hadn't heard that term before. What exactly is a data scientist?

Statisticians who I think the joke is it's data. It's programmers who are bad at statistics or statistics to statisticians who are about programing.

Well, whatever it is, you must be good at it because you did it for Obama when you were 20, right? That's right.

Wow. Because and you were able to do that because you graduated or started college at 13.

That's right. Me too.

So so. OK, so, boy genius. Let me ask you this then. How did you do with the 2020 election? Did you what were your predictions?

Close because the polls were way off, were they not the polls? The polls were wrong. You know, this was a really terrible year for polling. You know, 2016 was a bad year for polling, but twenty six, twenty, twenty somehow ended up being worse. And I think, you know, at least for me, I'll say the election was closer than I thought it would be, though I think the joke is, you know, everyone predicted going in that Joe Biden would be president.

The Democrats would have fifty one or fifty or fifty one seats in the Senate. It's kind of what happened.

But I'd love to talk just a little bit about why the polls were so wrong. I would love to hear.

Yeah. So I'm going to there's a tale of two areas. I'm going to start with 2016. So, you know, the big fundamental reason why polls are wrong, you know, everyone likes to talk about the undecideds breaking or, you know, turnout, but it's actually just that survey takers are super, super weird.

That's like the big the big problem, like creepy. I mean, a lot of them, I'm sure. I know.

I know there's a real fear. Like when people get the call, they think it's a weirdo.

So the biggest thing looking at 2016 is something called social trust. So, you know, the way this gets operationalized, social scientists, they ask, do you think people can generally be trusted or do you think people should keep to themselves? Most people say that people can't be trusted, something like 60, 70 percent of people. But the few people who do trust the people around them, kind of unsurprisingly, way more likely to answer phone surveys.

Yeah, you're getting trusting people. You're getting trusting people. You're getting nice people. We've done personality tests. People are way more agreeable, like the kind of people who just stop what they're doing. And they say, oh, a contemporary researcher wants to know my views on contemporary events. Oh, my God.

Yeah, I'll help him out. Yeah. And which is not what I would say about that. You're right. Yeah, definitely like that.

What's in it for me exactly was a lot of voters just like you. And so, you know, the big problem this has always been true. People with low social trust have never answered phone surveys, but used to just not matter. Used to be that like politics was a fight about whether taxes should be higher or lower. Right. And Donald Trump changed that. Donald Trump changed what it meant to be a Republican. And so, you know, suddenly, like, if you look among people who trust their neighbors, you know, they that group swung toward Clinton by like five or six points.

That's that's what the polls captured. That's the polling we saw. But there was this silent, hidden majority of people who didn't trust the people around them and and weren't answering phones. And those people disproportionately working class white voters who lived in the Midwest. And that's the big reason why I asked why all of these Midwestern polls were wrong.

So will they fix this next time when they start to do polling well, they adjust for that country? Well, I mean, I have a there's a different polling story, which is in twenty sixteen. You know, the states were wrong, but at least, you know, the national polls were about right. Twenty twenty was way worse. You know, the national polls are off by like three or four points. And the reason I think is kind of funny, it's basically coronavirus that like we actually when we do our surveys, we we actually join them to the voter file.

And so we could see starting in March, the percentage of people who answered surveys who were registered Democrats just shot up. And the reason is that Democrats were stuck at home. You know, they respected the lockdown. You can tell with creepy cell phone data that Democrats really were staying home and Republicans were out partying and doing spring break.

And and those Democrats were just desperately answering every survey they could find. And that's that's actually why the survey is wrong. It's it's kind of funny.

OK, I.

So, yeah, what was the biggest surprise, though, of the twenty twenty, I mean, for me, I don't know if this is what the scientists said, but the fact that Trump did better with Minorities'. Yeah, OK, so what happened there? Yeah, I think the big surprise I mean, in twenty sixteen, Trump did do better with nonwhite voters than than Barack Obama did. And I think a lot of people weren't surprised. They want to write that off.

They're like, oh, well, you know, Barack Obama has a lot of reasons he would do better with nonwhite voters. But in twenty eighteen, this really should have been a warning sign. You know, nonwhite voters trying to you trended against Democrats while white voters trying to CHWAT. And this was really consequential. We lost the Florida Senate race. If the Georgia governor's race, if Stacey Abrams had done as well among black voters as Hillary Clinton did, she would have been governor right now.

But 2020 was a continuation of that trend. And I think that was the thing that was most surprising to me, because it's something that a lot of the polls also didn't see coming just to run through it. Not Hispanic voters swung something like nine percentage points against Democrats, and that's percentage points. That means roughly one in 10 Hispanic voters switched their vote from Clinton.

And that's a group the Democrats count on historically.

Yes. And, you know, with black voters, it wasn't as large, but still there was a two to three percent shift among among Asian voters. You know, the data, the jury's still out, but it seems like there was at least a five, five or six percent shift. So this is really it's a really big.

I've read that you've said most most voters are not liberal. Yeah.

I mean, I think that most Democrats, you know, among Democrats, it's roughly 50 50. But I think the big difference when you look at ideology is it among white people. About 90 percent of white liberals vote for Democrats and about 80 percent of white conservatives vote for Republicans. But with nonwhite voters, it's not like that. And the reason and this is this is just like arithmetically ideology doesn't very, very much by race. Roughly the same number of black, white and Hispanic voters identify as liberal, moderate or conservative.

But partizanship varies a lot. And the reason for why is that Democrats historically have done really well with nonwhite conservatives. And the story of 20 20 is that Democrats used to win Hispanic conservatives by double digits. In this time, Trump won them by double digits.

Would you say that there's a WOAK and liberal or no. Really, two different at least wings of the party. People who consider themselves classic liberals like I do. Yeah, yes, that's why I think they lose. The Democrats have been losing votes that they should be winning.

You know, I think the big the big thing, defund the police. Could you come up with a more drive away the voters phrase than that? For example, you know, just to take one, crime is really unpopular.

So you're going to give political advice. You know, I think the core problem here is that as the party has become more educated, educated people have increasingly defined the brand of the Democratic Party. And like one thing I like to say is a lot of people will say it's like a truism in politics that Democrats are too wonky or eggheads. We talk too much about issues. We need to communicate our values.

But, you know, the the median voter doesn't share our values. Our values are weird and alien. If they had our values, they would be liberals. The only way Democrats historically won elections was by talking about concrete issues that people agreed with us on. It's how Bill Clinton won. It's how Barack Obama won. And, you know, I think that was one of Joe Biden's strengths.

But what are these values you think the average voter doesn't share?

Well, you know, just to go back to the polling thing, you know, like social trust is a big one. You know, liberals actually trust government. They trust society. You know, they really believe in positive some change, you know, in the and the potential for for positive interaction, but also, you know, racial resentment, attitudes toward gender, what kind of societies people want to live in, what kind of neighborhoods people want to live in.

Liberals like to live in, like exciting, tightly packed cities. From a personality perspective, you know, scientists like to study this fear factor, personality model, openness to new experiences, useful word to know, is just this idea of how people respond to novel stimuli. And, you know, it's highly correlated with liberal liberalism. Some people, when they see something new and exciting and it's like a new ethnic restaurant or something, they they get really excited and energized.

But a lot of people, the majority of people see novel stimuli and it drains them. It makes it freaks them out. And that's why there's all of this geographic sorting.

We seem to be entering an era of resegregation that's coming from the left. I mean, on many college campuses, you know, there are separate dorms, separate black dorms, graduation ceremonies, stuff like that. How will that affect elections in the future? You know, I think there's a lot of there is a great study in North Carolina that showed that racially integrated schools make people more more liberal.

But, you know, I think just to go back, I think that the important thing is to just realize that most nonwhite voters are not liberal. They don't identify as liberal. We should take that really seriously. And I think that when it would like realizing that most voters don't share our values means that we should instead try to meet people where they are with the values that they actually hold and that we should talk to them about issues that they care about.

All right. Well, thanks for coming on. Very enlightening. Let's see what you're doing when you're 40. All right. Thanks, David. Let's meet our panel. He's an editor at large at reason and host of the recent interview podcast, Nick Gillespie is back with us. Hey, Nick.

In a while, and she is the former Democratic senator from North Dakota and co-founder of the One Country Project. Our returning champion, Heidi Heitkamp, is back here.

Great to see you. Always good to see you here. OK, let's get to the tragedy of the week.

Joe Biden, just before we went on, was speaking in Atlanta about these shootings. He said, whatever the motivation, we know there's too many. Asian-Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning, the past year, feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are at stake. I thought that was a great statement. A true statement.

It's not very the lead. This is a big crime, crime, violent crime against Asians up 150 percent last year.

This is intolerable. We have to address it. However, the story is also instructive, and I think it says a lot about our tribalism and our inability to see evidence as opposed to what would fit the narrative that we already believe. Christopher, race, as it does not appear that that's the head of the FBI, does not appear that the motive was right. That was racially motivated. And yet, Marilyn Strickland, she is from Washington State. Congresswoman, racially motivated violence should be called for exactly what it is.

And we must stop making excuses or rebranding it as economic anxiety or sexual addiction. But what if it is that everything I've read about this guy, Robert Aaron Long, conservative Baptist, he's an albino assassin. He's flagellating himself because he feels bad about sex. All the sexual urges shouldn't be doing this. Porn addiction massage parlors seeks treatment for sexual addiction. This is the roommate said whenever he would talk about massage parlors, it was in the context of God and his parents never wouldn't the roommate know if it was about race.

Now, maybe we'll find out something that's not there. But it seems like people insist. No, this is what I thought it was. And I'm just going to insist. All right.

I think we're going to look at this through the lens of our bias. But my criticism there is how does Christopher Wray know it wasn't about race? I mean, he criticizes jumping the gun, but he hasn't finished his investigation. So we don't know. He said it doesn't appear to be what shut your mouth and say. I don't know yet. Can you all just give us some time to finish the investigation?

I think that's what I mean. I think that that is basically what he was saying.

And I think it's important because we're in a supercharged environment where everybody is talking about racism and white supremacism. The same survey that showed 150 percent increase in hate crimes in in 16 major cities also found overall hate crimes last year went down by seven percent. So, you know, we shouldn't be rushing to try to fit everything into a hate crime. The the history of Asians in America, they were the first people to be excluded from immigration. And as a matter of fact, South Asian Indians were not.

There was a 1923 Supreme Court case where an Indian tried to say why he should be allowed citizenship. It ended up not only did he lose, they ended up kicking out other Indians who had managed to get here. They have a horrible history in this country, but it's also a great immigrant story and that Asian-Americans now make far more than the median average family household in terms of income, in terms of education, in terms of opportunity. So as we talk and try to fix racism in our society, we have to look at bigger pictures.

The Asians are like Jews in America, where they face a lot of specific problems, but they also succeed very well and they ultimately are accepted for that.

I think, you know, the problem in this country is we don't confront issues like what's happening right now with the Asians until we have a mass shooting and, you know, at a massage parlor. But why not? But you seem to think that it's that you're insisting that you understand that it to racially.

But I really feel like if it was Armenians who were manning the massage parlors, he would have killed Armenians. We don't know that.

We don't know. But you seem to be what we do know. I mean, the roommate, the roommate, that's what he was saying in the privacy of his home. Wouldn't he have said it there?

I do think it's right to say, you know you know, over the past year and this is something that Trump and a number of people, you know, we're pushing the Wukong flu type of thing and whatnot and that, you know, this is odious, awful racial racist language that should be confronted. And, you know, that's something Biden said. When you hear something, don't put up with it. Put it down. I think that's true.

At the same time, I think turning this particular instance into something which it may not that in the end does not help you reach. People who are racist can fly by voices until there is something that is so heinous, we don't confront real problems. But can I just point out that sexual guilt. Yeah, from religion is also a big thing?

Yeah, it's been a big thing for millennia and millennia. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

He feels blessed because they're sexual beings and religion makes you feel bad about. I think there's likes to talk to you. The question here of, you know, what about massage parlors. What about legalizing sex work? There are ways that we can change, you know, how people interact and how they meet basic needs, you know, in an open way, in a more constructive way. There's many things that we can be talking about coming out of this.

And I do think it's right to, you know, to take a moment to look at the the residue of A.H. and racism in America and deal with it, but not necessarily to turn and keep this into something. It's that hard to keep two thoughts in our mind at the same time that this rate, this epidemic of violence against Asians is horrible and we have to do something about it. And this probably isn't part of it.

But I just I think people get so frustrated that no one's paying attention that everybody jumps on something like this and says, see, there it is, and then you get the attention. And that's the problem. We don't give attention to problems that aren't catastrophizing.

Well, that's good. That's a good segue way to my issue about the border.

It's that crisis at the border headline on the news season, right. Every year. And I thought it was interesting because I also read today, along with the border stories that over at the White House, they've put people on leave and fired some for smoking pot. I thought this was the new White House. And I thought, hey, wait, I thought Comilla had a had a come to Jesus moment on pot.

And we were all fired up for as long as she was hot and she went back to being a cop.

OK, well, not cool anyway. I think I'm connected. I'm connecting these two issues here, and I'll tell you why, because the Democrats are putting forth legislation this week in pieces. Now they're trying to with the easy stuff because immigration is the issue that keeps haunting them and that we as a country have to solve. So they're dreamers stuff about that humanitarian aid, farm workers, these are the easy ones. Biden also said we should address the root cause and then he mentioned aid to the Central American economies.

Excuse me, the root cause is drugs, drugs.

We like drugs. They grow drugs. It's illegal.

Those countries are going to be run by by narco narcoterrorists.

Can I can I even go a little bit further and say the problem isn't drugs, the problem is the war on drugs?

Well, that's what I mean. Yeah, no, but because I mean, I don't think the problem is drugs. Yeah. Drugs is never. But we're not able to get the cartels aren't moving avocados. Right. They're moving weed. They're moving cocaine. Yes. They're substances.

And this is where Joe Biden unfortunately is the most clueless person. He's the worst person to have in the White House at this time. This is a guy who over the past 50 years has been involved in every major, you know, every major increase in the war on drugs.

I don't think if drugs is the issue, this is not the guy you want in the White House right now as as it intersects with immigration.

You know, the problem the problem is we can all say let's legalize it. But it leads to really some pretty serious consequences like like like total addiction, expansion of addiction.

No, I'm not saying about marijuana. I'm talking about what can happen now. Well, OK, surgical did it.

No, Portugal did that. They legalized everything.

I think a couple criminalized and they actually saw lower use rates, lower our addiction rates, lower social problem.

Yeah. Let's take a different run on this. The vast majority, the vast majority of people in this country don't want to legalize drugs, but they also don't want to deal with consequences.

Well, look, not legalize the overwhelming majority wants to legalize weed.

Well, yeah. And that's where the market, by the way, being ended in November.

I don't if I may, in November, people in Oregon decriminalized all drugs like for personal possession, people in D.C. legalized mushrooms and things like that. Everywhere you look, people are starting to say we can have the war on drugs or we can have drugs.

You know, it's not a tough choice.

And by the way, all the bad illegal drugs, they have pharmaceutical versions. It's not that they're not you can get cocaine. They just call it Adderall. Right. You know, you can get heroin and they just call it methadone or opioids.

This is the craziest story about pot because it's scheduled higher than those drugs. Right? Because they have a pharmaceutical reason. Right. This whole thing with marijuana, I don't know why the Biden administration would step. Into this, because it is they don't see the trend nationally, which is South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana, South Dakota. Right. So if South Dakota's going to do it, my state has not yet. But we will everybody. Well, eventually, yes.

Kevin, you know, the next time you come on this show, there will be no there will be all this there will be all this arguing over, you know, the challenge that you have with the border is that no one wants to tell the truth about what's going on, which is the cartels are doing very, very dangerous, horrible things.

These kids are coming to the border basically because of illegal drugs. I know they're coming this way because they're economic migrants and they're going to come into this country and work and send remittances home because their parents cannot afford to live in. They're going to be sick. And their parents were from Italy, the parts that are kids.

And so if you return these kids, they won't have the ability to pay and their families are going to have a Great Depression. This stuff with the kids is really, really bad. The president is finding out that kids in cages was horrible, but when kids show up at the border, you put them in some sort of a thing that somebody can call a cage.

But there is that larger question then like, you know, they need to have like four surges. They need to have more, you know, facilities. They need to have more resources to deal with people humanely. You know, most asylums come here. They don't get accepted and they go back home. But we need a broader discussion on immigration. Donald Trump's greatest achievement was to turn everybody in favor of immigrants. 75 percent of Americans think immigration is a good thing for the country.

Eighty five percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Republicans, according to Gallup. Joe Biden should run with that. Then how did he get elected?

I'm going to build a wall.

Yeah, because he he got he got elected by getting the smallest percentage of votes that you could get and still squeal a lot of he got elected because there's two different kinds of immigrants, the ones that have been here for years and are your neighbors and everybody is in favor of them. And the ones coming to the border that they've been told are members of the cartel and they're going to rape your children. Right. And so is when you're right. And so when you abandon the border as a it's a part of immigration, you lose.

So you've got to talk about border security in conjunction with what's happening at the border. But the way to secure the border is to let more people pass through legally. Let anybody who wants to come here, who is not, you know, infected with with a communicable disease or has a violent criminal record, let them come through, let them work, let them live, let them pay taxes legally, and then you can start seeing the bad people will start coming in and other places.

I will tell you, if that was Joe Biden's position, he wouldn't be president of the United States right now. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but he beat Donald Trump pretty handily.

And unlike most Democrats, he was very pro immigrant because the Democratic Party has never been overwhelmingly favorable to immigrants.

That is where the president of the United States by 45000 votes, never forget that one and 45000 votes talking. If Biden had 45000 votes, had switched in three states, Donald Trump would have been reelected. That's how we got elected.

Right, right. Right. So closer than the one he won.

But everything about how crazy that is, that seven million people in this country right now. You and I have our discussion. Yes. And it's about your state. It is. You got to give that up in North Dakota. We know you get what you get for God damn senators because it's the Dakota territory. It shouldn't be two states. And California with 40 million people, gets the same number of senators in the Constitution. What are we going to.

Oh, we are suddenly now or now we know it's the Constitution.

All right.

Let me I want to bring in a little economics here, because I think, look, we just passed this giant bill, OK? Good. There's some nice things that are happening here that we're all happy about. You know, child poverty has been cut in half. I don't know anyone is for child poverty. But just let me give you the economic recap, because people don't follow, because I hear the economy is ready to sizzle again. We're going to have the roaring 20s again.

Well, maybe or maybe the depression 30s, I don't know.

But market value is that 32 times earnings, the norm is 16 times. In other words, it's 32 times. What a company is really worth is what the market is valued at, and that's twice what it normally is. OK, federal debt stands at 100 percent of GDP. Only the second time since World War Two of the federal debt is bigger than the size of the economy. The debt is bigger than the economy itself. OK, between 1930 in 1940, when we had, you know, the depression, so they spent six percent of GDP on the depression and recessions between 1945 and 2008, one percent of GDP we spent to get out of it.

Now, we spent twenty six percent of GDP in 12 months with all the it's five trillion dollars to fight the pandemic problems. Four trillion. This is an adjusted for inflation to win World War Two, we spent a trillion more on this than World War Two. Maybe this will work out. I don't know, but there seems to be this new season of this new ideology brought on by the pandemic that you can just dream up any number.

I mean, I remember when Obama was bailing us out of the, you know, the Great Recession and it was seven hundred and eighty billion. And people were like, holy fuck. He signed a paper for seven hundred and eighty. And now they sign this like it's the dinner check.

So I thought, well, the first thing is the Democratic Party saw what happened during the Trump years, right? Trump spent like a drunken sailor. He gave away billions of dollars to major corporations who, by the way, not bailed out a partner. Well, right. Right. The Republicans definitely are in debt way more than the Democrats. Right. Right. They always.

And then the Democrats have to come in and the Republicans act like, I don't know who spent all this money there, like a blackout drunk. And the point is and the point is, when it is when is that the working class people that the difference between these plans and the one that was just passed is I think it was appropriately targeted to the lower quartile and that it will, in fact, encourage economic growth. Yes. And you could see economic growth that would help pay for it.

I'm not going to say it'll pay for itself, but it it's like when is it the turn of the lower middle class to actually get a break from government instead of seeing it always go to the richest in this?

I don't necessarily disagree with you.

It would be great if most of this was going to deal with covid five percent, according to the Committee for a responsible federal budget. It's not going to lower quartile. People in this are expanded Obama subs Obamacare subsidies that go to households making five hundred and eighty five. There is a lot of there are child and tax credits that max out at households making 400000 dollars. One of the biggest scams that has been going on in the entire 21st century. And I think it started with George W.

Bush giving free and reduced price drugs to seniors who are wealthy back in Medicare Part D. Now, you are shoveling money at people like everyone at this table who don't need it, who haven't been hurt economically by the pandemic. And then we're saying, oh, but you know what?

We're helping those poor kids check back and see if they're actually feel like we got to this mental place where like we've been talking about how the debt is out of control since Ross Perot, like for 30 years, like, oh, my God, this debt we got to this point where it was so out of control and then Trump just went, fuck it.

And, you know, he made it way worse just in a quick amount of time. And then I feel like they're in this place now where it's like like when you're at four a.m. and you're ready, I might as well just stay up till the next hearing.

Right. I try to get to sleep at all. I'm just going to try to pull this off in a place where two is too many and five is not right.

It's just like, fuck it, it's apparently funny money anyway. Just the debate. The reckoning is going to be brutal because the economy is growing. In the last quarter, there was like something like four percent economic growth. It's going to do well without this. It's going to be supercharged. But it is like it's a Coke binge. It's going to burn out. All economists, even Marxist economists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst say when you run this level of debt with no sign of stopping, it reduces long term economic growth.

And that that's one of the reasons why for the past 20 years said what you know, genomically so much of the budget is to pay off the debt is just to pay back to lend me this money.

If interest rates go up for where they are right now, which is zero, we will spend behind we may exceed in our interest payments what we spend on national defense. Right. So I'm not defending the debt. I am defending that the prioritization that we've seen in the last four years has been way off the mark in terms of what American people do.

That has to do with. No, it does it does have something to do with this package, which is to try and balance this and then to set it right at some point into the future. If you're but you're like saying, oh, well, you know, you all bellied up to the trough when Trump was there and now Biden has to have the policy of austerity.

No, give me a break. It's not austerity. Give poor people, people who are struggling. Right. Let people who are doing well pay their own damn way. Right.

And that's what it's the I don't think that should be the Democratic position. I was not a fan of the two thousand dollar. You know, I thought that wasn't targeted enough. I thought we should have been much more clever about how we did it and where we made the investments. We could have done great infrastructure investments with that money. So, OK, I'll give you that. But damn it, I am tired of people sitting around and criticizing Democrats for tax and spend when every time we have a Republican president we would go into the debt and deficit and somehow they I don't know when you ask somehow, even though it happens every time.

Pattern every time of the Democrats come in and clean up the room that Led Zeppelin just trashed and then they ask who's who's the party? Who's the party of fiscal responsibility? Oh, it's the Republicans like Kevin McCarthy movie. Are you watching for them? You do not understand. We have tapes and we have no right history. Reagan did it, OK. All right. So last week I was talking about to change the subject of the Turner Classic movie, just like Turner Classic.

I once did a thing for them. And they but of course, in this new era, they had to reframe the classics. So they have to have a guy come on at the beginning. Yeah. See, there it is. I'm not I'm not lying. And give a little speech about why movies that you used to just enjoy because you understood.

You understood the times change, people change and mores change. It's called evolution, but now it's called problematic anyway.

So, yes, it's so it's so obvious, you know, and Gone With the Wind is on the list.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, my fair lady. My my fair lady is too rough for them.

It was too corny for me when I was 10. My father wanted me to go see it. I would be OK. So but those aren't just the only movies which I like to see some of the other ones that they have to give warnings to now. The classics. Oh, I'm sure you would. These are some of the other ones. I don't think these really need warnings, but they have a sleeping beauty. A prince kisses an unconscious woman without consent.

See, that is the Wizard of Oz. A powerful woman of color is murdered by a rural white girl. Psycho inaccurately portrays the lives of the vast majority of transgender motel owners. Rosemary's Baby fails to present Planned Parenthood as a viable option. Jaws portrays white people as victims, Ron. The graduate depicts a problematic age discrepancy that you can't blame on the man.

Oh, look, the greatest story ever told, yes, warning portrays in a positive light a power imbalance between marry a Palestinian teenager and God, a more powerful man. And, of course, Braveheart warning stars Mel Gibson. I swear to God, I don't want to talk about cancer culture and this nonsense every week, but I just don't think people understand how much this is a tsunami and how fast the goalposts change almost on a weekly basis. I just just literally off the top of my head before I wrote down three things I could think of, not just what you do now, what you do now.

It's anything you've ever done. And I can give you examples of that, not just what you say, what you say. It's what now what you listen to. They can get you for that, what you order, who you say you like, any sort of association. If you retweeted something, if you you know, I like this picture. Who was the woman in the Mandalorian? What did she do? She like something or she was a Nazi.

Oh, that's right.

I'm thinking somebody. But she's not a Nazi. She changed. She was she's saying, look at that. You're calling her. She's called other people.

Not right. Which is the Nazis.

OK, everyone's in Nazi now. Yeah, she does hang with white supremacists like a Mel Brooks does.

Yeah. He hangs with whites. I suppose I've now got subject to defamation. I don't know. I mean, it depends on what your definition of white supremacy is that you throw the goalpost there. Changed a lot. You a guy in a Klan hood who.

But I think I would have to I think we have to be really careful. There's two things the Republicans think they're going to get by on cancel culture in this whole Dr. Seuss stuff that's going on where they're reading Green Eggs and ham, proving that some of these senators can actually read and.

And and. And immigration and and so we can't ignore the fact that we got Donald Trump was in part because of political correctness. I mean, you did a whole show called. I did.

And when people say tells it the way it is, the guy lied every day repeatedly. And the reason why they thought he told it the way it is because he wasn't politically correct.

And so when people think they have to parse every word, oh, and I can't think about this, that is that is what's going to drive people crazy is going to further divide culturally this country. But I am so sick of the Republicans using the phrase cancer culture to somehow victimize the Republican Party according to part of the problem.

And I realize, Heidi, you are you're a recovering senator.

But, you know, let's not talk about this in terms of Republicans and Democrats and who's going to win a seat in the Senate or the House or anything like that. Let's talk about it differently, David. Sure. Your previous guest, he was canceled. Is he linked? He tweeted a link to a Princeton political scientist who happens to be black, who wrote about the effects of violent versus nonviolent protests in the 1960s on elections. David Shaw got fired because of that.

I mean, you know, this is what we're talking about, right? We need just tweeted out we need to have a different kind of conversation.

And it's not my are you looking to balance?

We're looking for the wrong perpetrator or the wrong like like you take Teen Vogue, right? They shouldn't have fired her. Well, it's people who don't know what you're talking about.

OK, well, the woman who lost. Yes, her name is Alexeeva. I've seen her many times on MSNBC and she's lost at twenty 27. Right. She just got a great job, lost a great job editor of Teen Vogue. And because she tweeted in high school, this is high school and I have a list of some of the tweets now. You know, some of them you bandwagon homo. Ha ha. You're so gay. Laugh my ass off.

I mean really.

Yeah. What can people say? This is his fault. Is it that you. I just say something. What if we talk shit in private.

We can't legislate that away. I don't think this woman is a is a homophobe. Also a woman of fuck's sake. So we have a woman of similar people talk shit about each other in private.

Right. I don't I'm not disputing that. I'm saying everybody's like, oh, all the people out there who are exercising their economic right to say, I'm not going to support that product because I don't agree with what you stand for. That's your economic right. Teen Vogue should have said, look, that happened a long time ago. That's ridiculous in high school. I know. But they are so afraid of any kind of high school, like bucking up.

You know, corporate America needs to stop buying into this stuff and just.

Right, right, right. I think you're right, Corporan. Somebody has to have some balls. Corporate America is not interested in doing that.

But there is I think we also have to look at the kind of ideology of localness. And it really is like all of the fire and brimstone, all of the damnation of Christianity without any possibility of forgiveness or salvation. It is a warped ideology, and I think it's taking the place of religion in many people's lives because it's this it's this total picture. It is starkly right and wrong. And, you know, and it is it's delusional and it needs to be engaged at the corporate level, but also at the individual level.

This is the flip side of if you hear people making really stupid shooty Asian-American jokes, you also have to call out people who are saying everybody is a racist, everything is racist, or what you said when you were in high school defines you when you're a and if you learned anything from the previous guest, the small sliver of people who are out there on Twitter causing this trouble, the warmness is not a big political movement. It is it is very big.

Getting exaggerates big and publishing.

It's big and universal. Well, that's because they're taking corporate America. Yeah, right.

That's because they don't they don't want to take a risk to publish something. University presidents are the worst. They don't want any controversy on universities. You know, it's like, well, we can't have that person. Well, you know what? You're a university. You should have all views presented and protect people when they come on your campus.

I feel like we're we're this is paradise. This is like the United Nations. And then the world outside doesn't give a shit. So, I mean, we need to figure out ways to engage people who are like, no, I am hurt when I hear something or, you know, when somebody says something that offends me, then that's the equivalent of violence. This is part of the problem. Words are not the equivalent of violence. And we need to get back to and I'm just robust, understand?

I'm just saying this, that the number of people who sit in that space are very minimal. And it's those people are exploited in the kind of era of we want to not to to. Politicize how you feel kind of era and so so my my. You're not saying this is Republicans are. No, I know because I think it happens on both sides. The war on Christmas is just like weakness, right?

It is. Yeah, of course. They're snowflakes, too. Yeah, but. But they don't. But but but they don't control the media. Yeah. The way these brats do, that's the problem. I don't think it was Republicans who got elected. Not a lot of Republicans and Teen Vogue or.

No. And I never thought I would live in an era. I remember watching movies about the 50s and the Blacklist era when people would whisper that you were a communist and all it took was somebody informing on you and saying, oh, they saw you at a rally or at some peace march and you were branded and your career was over or you were on the blacklist. People go to parties now and they like they don't want to talk. They're like, can I talk?

I don't know your girlfriend. She might be woke up, really, I'm not making this up, people, this informant thing, this it's not just what you do, it's what you don't report. That's another way the goalposts moved. I was reading about this guy, Winston Marshall, the banjo player, and Mumford and Sons. OK, I remember when they were a thing, yeah, for about the time it took to take a piss, this guy tweeted out that he liked a book.

It's a book called Unmasked. I never heard of it. You never heard of it? It's apparently not favorable to Antifa, so it's criticizing Antifa, OK, people write books he tweeted out, finally had the time to read your important book.

You're a brave man to the author. No, he has to step away. Everyone's always stepping away from the band. Oh, my God.

And this is his apology again.

So Soviet over the past few days, I have come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed. What would you hit somebody over the head with it?

I have offended not only a lot of people I don't know, but also those closest to me, including my band mates. What a bunch of pussies they must be.

And for that I am truly sorry.

It's so Stalin esque. It's, you know what? But I can read what I want. I'm a musician. Don't worry one again that he would have said that.

And, you know, this is also creeping into legislation in Texas. The governor and the Senate are poised to pass a law that would basically make social model content moderation on social media illegal because they're saying that religious people are being banned from Twitter and Facebook. In Colorado, people are trying to ban hate speech legislators. This all creeps in. It's not simply the private sector. And we are in a paroxysm of a contraction of free speech. And this is something you were talking about being a classic liberal.

I think this is something libertarians, liberals and conservatives can all agree on.

You need free speech. But the last word, South Dakota was good.

It's not good to hear the coda was. No, it said Governor Christie. No.

Yes, I was going to sign a transgender bill. And by the way, you know, saying they can't play in girl sports, really, like, that's the biggest issue ever in South Dakota, apparently, because it's getting a lot of attention across the board. Guess what? Amazon came in. They were going to put a plant there and they said, you know, we might not like all of a sudden Kristi Noem gets religion, that maybe that isn't the right thing to do.

So let's see if she signs the bill. And this is where that that use of economic power can actually be used to the good.

It's my time to talk about that issue, but I don't. Maybe next time. All right. Thank you, panel. Time for new rule. All right, you know that a new HBO documentary claims that the founder of Kueng on cue himself is actually Ron Watkins, a 30 something Insull who lives in Japan surrounded by comic books and a doll for a girlfriend.

Q Going on, followers have to admit they spent the last two years worshiping someone they would have beat up in high school.

Congratulations, geniuses, you made a god out of the GrubHub delivery guy. This company that promises to deliver Viagra discreetly to your door has to tell me what's the alternative?

A marching band forms into the shape of a penis and shows up outside my house. It's a box in the mail. What's not discreet? The pharmacist at CBS shouting After you remember, if there's any problems with your erections, call me.

Will make sure your symbolic gesture doesn't just confuse everybody. I'm sure the red face paint of these protesters in Chile has a deep meaning, but I can't help but think of my grandmother trying to put on lipstick in the car.

Neuro stop using the phrase plain vanilla, vanilla is a flavor just like any other, it comes from the vanilla bean. You know what other flavor comes from a bean chocolate. But you don't hear the mainstream media using the term plain chocolate, but plain vanilla, that's somehow OK. Well, it isn't OK. I'm Tucker Carlson. Good night.

Trying to get my chukka face. Neuros, someone has to tell Lexa Voss, who teaches sheep cuddling seminars on her farm, it all might seem more appealing if this sheep didn't have a look on her face that says, oh, boy, I know where this is headed.

And finally, new rule, if you believe in the philosophy of equality of outcomes, then you really shouldn't have watched the Grammys last Sunday because the Grammys, aside from the usual award show, Virtue Signaling, are still largely about the idea that certain people do music better than others and it's OK to reward them for it. That's called meritocracy. And it's the opposite of guaranteed outcomes, equality of outcomes as opposed to equality of opportunity. We used to call that by another name, trophy syndrome, a world that was.

The world that was created back in the 90s, where everybody, every kid gets a trophy, no matter how good or bad they are at something. Well, the result of that kind of thinking is that American kids now have a totally deluded and unearned belief in their charmed brains and talent.

It's not only that the entire generation wants to be famous, it's that they think not being famous isn't fair.

If you think I'm exaggerating. Let me quote from this article in Rolling Stone magazine last year lamenting how streaming has not given us equality of outcomes in the music industry. Oh, the Grammys would look quite different if we followed this template. The article tells us that more than one point six million million artists released songs between January 20, 19 and July 20, 20, 40 thousand tracks a day on Spotify.

And yet Rolling Stone complains today, streaming landscape looks a lot like the music industry used to. A small class of artists see not just the majority of activity, but damn near all of it. Yes, these are called the good ones.

I mean, yes, of course, an occasional big talent can fall through the cracks, but in general, it's simply a case that most people who try their hand at music write the songs that don't make the whole world sing.

Rollingstone complains that, quote, Nearly all the streams went to artists in the top 10 percent, with the bottom 90 percent pulling and just point six percent of streams. Whoa. Let me get this straight. Talented artists, people like, ah, listen to more than untalented ones. They don't.

Stop the presses. Yes, that's a meritocracy if people don't like your song, your mommy can't make them listen to it.

You know. You know why ninety nine percent of artists aren't getting heard because music is hard and most people suck at it.

For more details, Google Reality. Rolling Stone actually writes the sentence.

In a perfect world, the bottom one percent of artists would get one percent of activity. No, they wouldn't. That's a stupid world I don't want to live in.

Who taught you this nonsense? And when you whine that streaming hasn't just upheld the gap between music's haves and have nots, it's widened. You're making my case for me because streaming allows the public to sample everybody. There's no more gatekeepers. You can't complain. No one heard your song because no label would sign you. We tore that wall down and the result was the same. Some musicians are have nots because, yes, they may have a voice, but we have ears.

It reminds me of the early audition rounds of the old American Idol where contestants are all attitude and image as if to say, can we not focus so much on the talent and just skip the part to where the part I'm going to get to be an idol.

Seventy two percent of Gen Z say they'd like to be an online celebrity and fifty four percent of GenZE and millennials say they would become an influencer given the opportunity.

You know, if it wasn't too much work, like making a sex tape.

Speaking of which, Paris Hilton just made just made a return to the limelight, revealing that the ditzy party girl we knew back in the day was just her playing a character and that there really was more to her than sex tapes, driving drunk, carrying around a little dog and saying, that's hot.

I mean, what about her work on the Human Genome Project?

You know what, any jokes I did about Paris, I don't feel bad, sorry, not sorry, I just can't I can't be living in this time when we're madly on the hunt for anything with the slightest whiff of white privilege and then feel bad for Paris Hilton.

Quite the reverse. Maybe Paris is the one who owes us an apology. For being patient zero, for today's vapid, entitled, Famous for Nothing culture, she kind of birthed the world where every 15 year old with a phone aspires to be an influencer. She's the face that launched a thousand little shits.

Paris led directly to the Kardashians and then to housewives and teen moms and hidings and snuggies and a generation of young girls who look up to the role models who managed to turn an unenthusiastic blowjob into an empire.

Young people who think talent, my talent is being me and you wanting to live my life, Kylie Jenner is a billionaire based on her ability to sit near a pool for the generations who are always on and on about.

This is my voice and I have something to say. An awful lot of that. Something is about lipgloss.

All right. That's our show. I want to thank my guests, Nick Gillespie, Heidi Heitkamp and David Shorey, where a great crowd. I thank you very much. We'll see you next. One more way to maybe catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10:00. We'll watch him any time on HBO. On demand for more information, log on to HBO Dotcom.