Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Please, thank you, you're a fantastic audience. Thank you. I know. I know I am happy today because this is our last show here from My Man Cave, going back to the studio next week and not a moment too soon because, you know, it was hot. Boy, we've got a heat wave here in California. We got in L.A., we got these rolling blackouts.

That's a little different rolling blackout in L.A. That's when you lose your electricity while you're high on Molly.

Yeah, oh, it's hot here. Local officials are urging looters to stay hydrated. And we got a new thing, I'm not making this up. Fire, tornadoes, love California always ahead of the curve on new trends in a fire. Tornadoes. Boy, now, look, I know this sounds like something you don't want, but remember, you said that about podcasts and anal sex.

Oh, and speaking of on fire, did you see the Democratic convention hashtag sarcasm?

Oh, man. How do you describe it, just like you have it tuned into the Jerry Lewis telephone at like 2:00 in the morning. It was a lot like that, but it accomplished what it had to accomplish. Joe Biden accepted the nomination this week in a high school library. Oh, it gets worse. An old lady came out and shushed him.

Wednesday night, Obama spoke, he killed it, took the gloves off against Trump, he said Trump has no interest in doing the work and Trump was so pissed about that that he missed the two foot putt.

Also, Joe, you know, he's going after the youth vote, so he was interviewed by Cardi B and yes, she interviewed and Biden said that his daughter gave him a nickname, Joey B. And he also has a rap name. You know that Joe Biden. Yes. It's the fresh prince of smell hair.

Yeah, Joe asked Carti, you know, as politicians, do you know, what are the issues that are of interest to you, that matter to you? And she said she wants free health care, she wants free college and she wants racial justice. And Joe said, hey, whatever, get your pussy wet.

But no, it was it was a very, very nice interview and it ended well at the end, he said, this is why I will vote for you. And Joe said, and this is why I picked you as my running mate. So is it. But hey, big news out of the Senate, the Senate Intelligence Committee this week released their report on Trump and Russia. And big surprise, yes, there was quite a bit of collusion.

Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, get this was using 10 different encrypted messaging apps like Whicker Signal three fiber Voxer Hushmail sounds a little fishy. Thank God he wasn't using a private email server.

But let me just reiterate, finally, next week, we are back in the studio now, there are some trade offs there. Yes, there's a slightly greater risk of infection, but a much lower risk of stepping in dog shit after new rules.

All right, we've got a great show, we have Oliver Stone, John Kasich, the Reverend Dr. William Barber, the second and Thomas Frank. I spoke to them all yesterday. Let's get to. OK, my first guest is the former Republican governor from Ohio who spoke on the first night of the Democratic National Convention this week and endorsed Joe Biden for president. Our friend John Kasich. Governor, I know they say politics makes strange bedfellows. Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that you would be at a Democratic convention opening for Bernie Sanders?

Well, it seems a little bit, you know, kind of out of the ordinary bill, but, you know, my whole career, I've had great relations with people in the other party. One of them is a guy named Ron Dellums. So you might recall he was a very liberal Democrat. He was a congressman. He was the mayor of Oakland. And he and I became very, very close. And, you know, I did things with actually with Ralph Nader on corporate welfare, with Tim Penny on balancing the budgets.

So, you know, this is not even though I would have never kind of imagined this, it's not that I'm uncomfortable seeing people in the other party is somebody that I can work with and help in some ways. But speaking at a Democratic convention, obviously it's something out of the box that's a lot bigger, obviously bigger than it.

But yeah, but I got to tell you at the time, with some of the things I did with Dellums, which was to limit the production of the B2 bomber, I mean, I was actually in a meeting with Republican leadership and a guy there accused me of being a traitor. I mean, those were big things. I mean, that was that was big time when you start taking on major weapons systems and we limited the production of it. But this is big time to be at the convention.

But and when they asked me to do it, I had searched my conscience, as you would expect. And I thought about it and I thought this is the right thing to do. And I hope you kind of felt as though it was a classy talk, because I, I, I tried to talk about what's important in our country.

Yeah. It was got good reviews and it should have. But I'm just saying this is endorsing telling people to vote for the person who is not in your party. Let me ask you this a little bit tougher question. Would you have done it if you were still in office? Because I see a lot of Republicans doing this. Colin Powell spoke there and a number of others, Susan Molinari, Meg Whitman, all retired. And you don't see it a lot from Republicans in office.

In fact, just that question. Only one question.

Yeah, but you can you can remember that I expanded Medicaid, right. It was very controversial at the time. I was the only major Republican governor in the country that did that. And I was heading into to re-election and I went ahead and did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. And not only did I hide from it, I went out and explain to people why I was doing it. So, you know, Bill, life is so short, you know, it's just so short.

And when you feel really compelled and it's a matter of conscience, you've got to do what you have to do. And but I can't project back. I can just give you an example of what I did that went against the grain and that I'm comfortable with what I've done. And let me tell you this. I get a lot of heat for this, too. I get praise and heat all at the same time. And I knew it would come.

That's life.

Yeah. And now that you want people to go out. Especially in Ohio, which is close this year, very close. You want people to go out and pull the lever for the Democrat. Do you have any regrets about some of the things you did maybe when you were governor that really served to suppress the votes of Democratic voters to use it or lose it? Law which you pushed through, which says if you haven't voted in two elections in a row, they take you off the rolls, cutting down on early voting.

I mean, some of that stuff is what Democrats are accusing Republicans of doing, which is the only saying the only way you can win elections is basically by cutting down the number of people voting. Well, Bill, first of all, we have we have more early days of voting, it's easier to vote in Ohio than about any other state. And secondly, that whole use it or lose it with something I didn't pass that that was something that was in effect.

But one of the things that I did do was tell the legislature that I was not going to go along with the idea that people had to have a driver's license I.D. because I felt that that would be that would be very unfair and it would hurt people. So I'm satisfied with with what I had to do. And in terms of in terms of that that that early voting, again, I think we have like twenty nine days of early voting. It's more than what they have in New York.

So maybe people ought to catch up to us rather than we worrying about how many days we have done a good job here with that.

OK, well, listen, I'm going to read you what the president said yesterday. Which I hate to keep being an I told you so on this show, but Donald Trump said the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged, which is basically saying, heads I win, tails you lose. And then they ask Kelly McEnany about it. And she said, yeah, they're in the will. See what happens. Moad, which is, of course, not the answer you want to hear from a president about.

Will you accept the results of the election? Donald Trump also said we're going to win four more years and then after that, we'll go for another four because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years. I mean, he's doing my act for me, this guy. I still think people are not taking this as seriously as they should. What do you say and what should we do?

Yeah, Bill, my concern is this. So you have a guy out here already setting it up saying, well, you know, I think there's we're going to be ripped off unless I win. And the problem with it, the deep problem with it is if you get like twenty or twenty five percent of the people in this country that don't believe in the legitimacy of a presidential election, you've got to have a real, real problem. And that's when I first heard him talking about that.

I went through what went through my mind. You can't have a situation where the president of the United States and just think about it, there's precedence for this. Remember, Richard Nixon felt that things had not gone the right way when he ran against Kennedy. He thought he had grounds of protest. He didn't do it. Al Gore and I know Al very well, Al. You know, Al was able to concede. He said, look for the good of the country, I'm not going to fight this.

So we have Republicans and Democrats who have have put the country first and which you see with these comments. To me, it is it's it's beyond deeply troubling, because if you get that number of people that don't believe in the legitimacy of the election, where do we go from there? So I just hope it's going to be a sweeping victory. But I think even with a sweeping victory, you're still going to have people that doubt the outcome. But that's the mess we're in.

And that's why I spoke at the convention, because the things like that cannot be tolerated.

I still don't hear what we're actually going to do. And it's more than just I think people who don't accept the election, it's that both sides use this word existential about if the other guy wins, America is over. When you have two camps like that who think that it's the end of the country, the end of our life as we know it, if the other side wins now, in what world is Joe Biden the end of America? I don't know.

But that's where they are. Do you really think there's going to be a peaceful transition of power? Well, Bill, I would I don't want to speculate that things could go it could go negative. I don't want to I don't want to feed that. I don't have to be something you need to talk about. But I will tell you that that's another reason why I spoke, because the hatred through clenched teeth doesn't now exist just with politicians. It's now down into families.

It's in it's with neighbors. It's with friends. I mean, I have never seen a time and it's been getting they're getting it now.

It's been fed. You know, it's like putting gasoline on a fire where, you know, it used to be the politicians didn't like one another. But now when you have families being broken, people can't talk about this. This is what really troubles me. And it's so ridiculous because we're Americans and it's that everybody's there in their own silos. It's tribal. And I wrote a book about this. In fact, we talked about it before. It's called it it's up to us.

If you can't, you fix everything from the bottom up, not the top down. And when the public is divided, you can't get anything done. And that I. I'm so upset about that because I see it every single day. Well, listen, I commend you for speaking at this convention and endorsing Biden. I think that was a really great thing you did. And for those people who are hostile to hear you say you're getting a lot of heat, you know, I know that sometimes comes from the left.

And I just want to say to those people, look, this country, you're always going to be sharing it with some people, a lot of people who just don't see the world the way you do. And you have to accept that. It seems like we're in this place where we want to own each other and obliterate each other. No one wants to compromise. And that's something that you and Joe Biden have in common, your two guys who, you know, who excel, that people have differences.

You can't own them. You have to work with them. We have to coexist anyway. I don't have any more time.

But let me just say one more thing. You know, you and I probably disagree on this, and maybe sometime I could come on and talk about it. But the fact that we have eroded religion and what I mean by that is, I mean, not the don'ts in religion, but the dos. Love your neighbor. We're all made in the image of God. You see, if we actually if people thought about it, then they wouldn't be able to cancel people out.

They wouldn't be able to express all this bitterness and anger, because under that scenario, you must respect and care for your neighbor. You must realize that when people are made in the image of our creator, they deserve respect and you cannot cancel them. This is something that we need to talk about. I know it's it's tough because we've seen a lot of people who are preachers who have given religion a bad name. But for those best people who were of the faith, Jewish, Christian, whatever that is, Muslim, whatever it is, there is an element there of respect, an element there of accountability.

And so it is something that some point I hope that we can talk about.

You remind me of the dentist who said something provocative just as he sticks that thing in my mouth. And I can't answer because I have to go up. It's a lot I would like to say to that. And you're right, we don't agree. But I appreciate you coming on and doing what you're doing. Thank you, Governor. Thank you, Bill, very, very much. OK.

All right. He is the president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign. His latest book is We are called To Be a Movement. The Reverend Dr. William Barber, the second. Great to see you, Rev. And he's the author of People Know A Brief History of Anti Populism. Thomas Frank. OK, you guys, listen, you two have a lot in common. I think you're both very well known for trying to convince the Democratic Party maybe that they have gone in the wrong direction and abandoning the their traditional demographic of the working poor in favor of what we would call the whole food voters, Whole Foods voters.

How do you think the convention so far has done in winning back those voters and achieving your goals?

Oh, man.

Who's going to go first either? Well, Tom, go ahead.

So if you'd asked me a couple of days ago, I'd say that Biden is doing a superficially good job. You know, he at least understands what went wrong in twenty sixteen in some way. And is one of the reasons he's the candidate is because this is a guy that that has a really good chance of winning back Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, et cetera. But I want to you know, when you watch this convention, one of the things that really bugs me about it is that they look, this is a society that it is you know, it is heaven on earth for the kind of people that you just described, the Whole Foods Democrats.

I live among these people. They're very affluent. They're doing great. And it's a wonderful time for them, for the rest of us, for like the vast majority of Americans, this is a failed state. This is a society that is crumbling. I mean, the evictions we're about to face a mass wave of evictions, you know, foreclosures, the opioid crisis just finished. Now we're in this pandemic, medical bankruptcies, deindustrialization on and on and on.

And it gets worse and worse and worse. This is this is not being discussed at the Democratic convention basically at all. You know, this and this is the kind of thing that was the bread and butter of the Democratic Party not all that long ago. Bill Maher, I mean, within our lifetimes, this is the kind of thing Democrats would talk. They would talk about nothing else. Now, they don't mention it at all. But if you're one of these people.

I'm sorry, I'll shut up.

No, I just wanted to jump in and just say and here's the problem, Bill. It's not just this convention. I want to do something John Lewis did. He said he supported Kennedy, but he criticized it before. We got in the cold. We had one hundred and forty million people living in poverty, low of 62 million people making less than a living wage. Sixty six million white people living in poverty low. Well, we have 80 some million people uninsured or underinsured.

Just did a study just before the convention started that said if you just have a one to 19 percent increase among poor and lower people of all races, creeds and colors, sexualities who voted on an agenda, an agenda that was clearly and talked about them and their issues, you could change all 15 battleground states and even the South changed. Yes. To the Senate. Is there the question to me is, how do you have continue to have a convention of a convention and you don't even say the word that represents 43 percent of the nation?

And over that, this is before code. It's going to be over 50 percent of the nation. Now, how do you do that? So, so superficial. I agree with Tom some of the things we're seeing, but every one of those candidates promised at a conference that we had in twenty nineteen that they were going to call for a full debate on poverty and low wealth. And it will call for a full debate on what systemic racism really is, starting with racism, suppression.

They said that the poor people, the preachers, once they get a convention, they go right back to the same level. Republicans, racialized poverty, Democrats seem to run from poverty, get stuck in the neo liberal market, and we leave out millions of people, 32 million people who could vote, who are poor and those who did last time. And one quick step in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Trump won by seven nine thousand plus votes, two point one million poor and low wealth.

People in those areas didn't even vote. And when I visit them, I go to Appalachia and to Alabama and they say a lot of them say we haven't voted last two years because nobody talks to us. We never hear our issues. And it just looks like it's going to be the same. Now they're starting to say we're going to stop making us safer. We're not a weight on them anymore. That's why we're organizing. But it's ridiculous. And we could do so much better.

We could expand the electorate and change the calculus of politics. Otherwise, that's what we do, is we ask to keep the door open for Trump, because if Trump just wins the southern states, he wins one hundred and sixty eight electoral votes. One hundred seventy one third of all poor people live in the south. One third of all poor white people live in the south. If you just raised 19 percent of poor people to the south who haven't voted to vote around the stop and change, this extremism like he is can't win in this country.

Can I throw out two points here? If you don't talk about this stuff, Trump will. We saw that in 2016. It's not like he's going to do anything about it. He's a demagogue. Right. But he will he will pretend to care. And he did a, you know, a fairly decent job of that in 2016 for all his folly and his his buffoonery. And he will do it again if you give him this chance. Now, the larger question that we should be asking, and I hope that you will ask as Bill, why why don't the Democrats want to do this, like what's Reverend Barbour was was saying just now?

If you were to you know, in my new book, I write a lot about things that Democrats did in the nineteen thirties during the Great Depression, which are like, you know, mind boggling today. We can't even believe they did it. But the governor of Minnesota, for example, did a moratorium on on foreclosures and evictions. What if Joe Biden did that today? What if he actually didn't just promise it? He actually somehow did it contrive to do it as president?

He would have those voters for a generation. Why don't they do stuff like, OK, but let your imagination fail them? Last night at the convention, they showed a video of a woman speaking in Spanish saying she came to the country illegally because she needed health care for a party that's already being painted. As for open borders, which is not true, but a lot of people believe that. Is that an opposition to the people? That very people you're talking about, the guy who's out of work, can't pay his rent mortgage, can't even visit his mother now because of covid.

And that guy is saying, yeah, but what about my problems?

Well, could be if you don't lift it all up and if you don't show to that person who came as all immigrants, they've come to this country looking for for for a way up. And the truth of the matter is what some people call illegal today. If they had the same viewpoint, their own great grandmothers would have been illegal, too. If you don't explain that, have a grown up conversation, but then go further and say, let's deal with the fact that the people, for instance, who are against immigrants and fixing immigration reform, guess what?

They are the same people that would push voter. And gets to push voter suppression, targeted talk, black, brown people when they get elected, they use the power they get to steal health care and block living wage. And guess what? In raw numbers, they hurt more white people. They actually hurt you. So that lady is not your enemy. We should be fixing immigration. But you can't do that if you don't put the face of poverty on the screen.

If you don't talk about these issues and say if we get elected, if we get elected, we're not going to give eighty three percent of all this corporate money to corporations and banks while we don't give the essential workers the essentials that they need. I'm meeting with people who say they feel like they are going to their own mass murder. I say what they said because we are being forced to go to work in lethal situations. We got people gave us a name change from service worker to social workers.

They gave us a hand clap at six o'clock at night, but they didn't give us the wages, the sick leave, the unemployment and the rent forgiveness and more mortgage forgiveness and more moratorium on utility cut off that we need. So if you just do that, you're exactly right. You just do that one side to a whole score. If we have a grown up conversation about poverty and what it's doing to us across the board and how it's hurting.

Forty three percent of this country. And then if people understand what can happen and I Candy Lopez just came out with a book and he says, we have been fooled into imagining the Trump supporter as a poor white person when it's just not true. Many poor white people are not voting and they're not voting because of the voter suppression issues like child, but most because of issues. And if we talk to them, just like we talked about and if we get them all in the same room, what campaigns do we get?

Poor whites in the same way with black Latino with with with indigenous people, with gay people, straight people, with our leaders and saying this is what's going on. This is these are the policies that are destroying all of us. And in my book I wrote is called We are called to Be a Movement. What we say is the reject. If all the rejected people come together, those being rejected because of their race, the color, the sexual, the poverty, the income, they form a power base.

Poor people are now 25 percent of the electorate and seven hundred people and people are dying every day before I can speak to them. Let me ask a question about the change this election. Let me ask a question about the convention. HRC was given 90 seconds to speak. I just talked to John Kasich, who gave a long, longer speech. Some people are not happy with that. It's obviously based on a decision the party made that AOC. Yes, she gets this a lot.

But we are making the calculation that showing her, showcasing her, we lose more than we get in this election. Now, I see that Trump's support has not changed like that. Forty two percent. It's a bad number for a president, but it is steady. It's steady that almost any president has had in decades. They are not switching, which tells me, OK. That means, are they really going to switch because John Kasich is talking to them or are they going to go there?

We like you, John Kasich. Nice try, but I'm staying with my tribe. It does argue more for the IOC.

How about Colin Powell, the architect of the Iraq war? You know, that's going to persuade a lot of people, right?

I mean, the strategy would be know. Let's let's excite our side. Well, I don't know.

I've said the reverse to I don't know. Politics is very complicated.

Well, it is. And frankly, it is very complicated book, but some things are not that complicated. You have an African-American woman on the ticket for vice president. You're talking about bringing in the African-American base. And, you know, the only place she can expand the base is a poor and low people. And, you know, if you do by less than 20 percent, you change 15 states and you bring in somebody who's a voter suppression, not just Casey, who is not a voter suppression against black and brown people who also pass the worst welfare reform bill.

It hurt poor white people more in raw numbers and it hurt black people. That makes no sense. And then you give ACLC 60 seconds and some people try to argue that that's extreme. But what was extreme about health care, higher education, living wages and labor rights for all and addressing colonialization? The fact of the matter is we brought in the extreme in case and he gets the life and he gets to be kind of colloquial, but he brings nothing.

But if you bring folks in. Well, we don't know. Well, you've got a whole electorate out there to explain. Well, we'll see. We'll see the way the answer. Why don't they what they're not interested in they're not interested in doing that. Look, in some ways, they are trying the same the same strategy that they used in twenty sixteen with a few variations. You know, Joe Biden is obviously a more lovable guy than Hillary Clinton was and that sort of thing.

And, you know, he's a great guy. And Trump is such a scoundrel. And Trump seems like even more of a scoundrel this year. But again, they're not really offering a kind of positive vision of the sort that the Reverend Barber just described. And they don't want to do that. OK, look, this has been going on for a long time in the Democratic Party, Bill, where the centrist wing basically came out on top of the liberal wing and they're not ever going to look back.

You know, they they won they won the game. And they're they're not going to let these people have the time of day when a Bernie Sanders runs for president, they're going to see to it that he gets defeated. The very same sort of opinion cartel that today is saluting Joe Biden for his brilliance and his wisdom. And, you know, and then last week, every single op ed, every single day was about Trump and his folly and stupidity.

These same people four years ago with the same unanimity, we're berating anybody who criticized Barack Obama from the left for being these liberal whiners. And how can you expect him to do anything when he has to deal with the Republican Congress, blah, blah, blah. But let's remember this, that it will never end.

But let's not forget. Yes, sir. Go ahead. I want to give you one hopeful piece that happened if Democrats would watch. Kentucky had an election this year for the Poor People's Campaign. We went in there and we organized for three years from the heart, from the hood to the house. We put coal mines in the same room with fast food workers, Louisville. We showed them they were being played against each other, Bill, on one of our training, we showed in voter suppression and we showed them everybody who supported voter suppression.

And then we connected that on a map to the politicians who were blocking the health care for the coal miners and taking that one guy got up and said, well, damn that pastor. He said, they're playing us against each other. I said, what are you going to do about it? So they started organizing, never endorsed a candidate, but they started pushing issues. The Democratic candidate started pushing those issues and hearing them and started talking about poverty.

And he started going to the holler and he went to the hood. He won the Democratic governorship in an off year in Kentucky. And then the first week he kept his word on health care and selling and ending the. So we're not just talking hypothetically. If you want to change the American politics, you cannot ignore forty three, which is going to be now over 50 percent of the population. Reverend Barber, when you go into these places, I mean, you're talking about Kentucky, I mean, Appalachia, West Virginia.

This is the typical Trump voter. Most people think of that. And Trump did very well in those states. Certainly West Virginia, I think, is his best state. And do you find that the why do you think that the white people are racist? Because for years, what conservatives complain most about liberals was you say we're racist about everything. We're all racist. And like I did many jokes myself, like, so I'm not going to say I wasn't part of it.

And look, I my honest opinion is that most of these Republicans are not racist. They're just very blind. They think racism has been solved. They want to think that even John Roberts thinks that. So that's kind of where they are. But I feel like it's now become kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because we're in this land of white fragility. That book that's at the top of the book charts that a lot of the liberals are embracing, which seems to be saying to white people, you have two choices.

You're either racist or you're racist and you don't know.

Yeah, and I'm not I don't I don't I don't like to use terms left and right liberal. And so that's a whole nother conversation because I think we've got to move to the Mossen. And I don't mean religious moral of the Constitution. I think every piece of public policy ought to be asked this question. Does it establish justice, does insure domestic tranquility? Does it provide for the common defense? Does it promote the general welfare? And does it give equal protection under the law?

And if not, then it's constitutionally inconsistent, is morally indefensible and economically insane. But what I can tell you from the people I've talked to, from Mississippi to Maine, from Appalachia to Alabama, is that white liberals overestimate the racism of poor white people and they underestimate their own. The reality is that what you need to do is just have a conversation with folks and show them the connection. First thing, you got to stop talking about racism as individual acts of meanness or feeling.

Ibram Kennedy has helped us on that. He says the very fact that we have to say systemic racism and we don't understand it really is redundant racism. It's always been about structure and not just about individuals. And then the issue of whether or not somebody is racist in their heart is a waste of time because Klan members would tell you they're not racist. The cop that killed George Flaubert's is not racist. To say that that's not how you deal with racism or racism.

You have to look at the policies that you support and watch the disparate impact. What we find is that when we go in to these white communities and we have black people in the community in with us, like in Harlan County, we teach and we say, listen, you know, about voter suppression. They say, yes, people told you the all this voter fraud. But let us show you something. And we show people the as I said, those who do the voter suppression laws.

And then we say that, you know, those are the same people that are blocking your health care and taking your living wage. And then we say racism is targeted at black people and brown people and indigenous people. But ultimately, racism is anti democracy and to humanity and racism is alive. And that's something my grandmother taught me that I use in politics. I didn't get it from Duke and all these other schools, she said. But if you scratch it, you find the feet when you can show poor white people that racism is alive.

And when you scratch racism, you go fast about your health care as still your living wages and still your environmental protection and still your clean water. That changes the whole conversation. You don't have to not talk about racism. You have to talk about it the right way, and then you have to connect it to the interlocking injustices, systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and the. Narrative of religious nationalism, and when you connect all five of them, you can organize that 20 percent.

All of brown people who are cool are wealth around their own agenda, who, when they vote, could fundamentally change that. So that's what we do. We're not going to sit home just because they didn't mention us. So people are saying we're going to be heard. One final thing I want to bring up here, Tom. You wrote the book, What's the Matter with Kansas? I thought maybe this would be interesting for you. Steve Bannon was arrested today.

Yeah, I saw that from where he had an organization called We Build the Wall. Now, of course, we remember at the beginning, Mexico was going to pay for the wall. And then when they did and it was like, give me your donations, give us your donations. And it was a complex scheme. Well, actually, it was not complex at all. It was like, you give me your donations, I don't build the wall and I buy yachts.

So wait a minute.

This is there's a long history of this in conservative land. You know, about this direct mail schemes in the in the 80s. You know, when a comedian is told, OK, don't say these people are stupid, and then they give Steve this money and he buys a boat with it.

What is your advice to a comedian who can't say, OK, that's fucking stupid, but that individual act is stupid, just don't call my Kanzen stupid. That's all. That's all I can. I think about the last question because sorry, what Reverend Barber is doing is, is is is absolutely critically important, trying to build a mass movement of working class people across racial barriers. And for my money, that's a movement for economic democracy and for my money.

That is that's what populism was about. This movement in the 90s that I've been writing about. That's what was successful for this country in the nineteen thirties. That's what Dr. King wanted to do.

And when you talk about the white fragility or whatever, whatever it was, that is an idea that is obviously extremely corrosive to solidarity, extremely corrosive and deadly if you're trying to assemble an electoral majority. But there is this and this is what absolutely fascinates me. There's just. Large number of Democrats that don't care about those things, right, and what interests them is what I call the my term for it, which is the utopia of scolding where they get to live in this happy little world and they go to Whole Foods and they live in the really nice suburb and they have a professional white collar job.

And in their spare time, they get to shake their finger. Yes. At the people lower in the social hierarchy, them for their you know, their vulgarity and their and their their tastelessness and their bigotry. And that is enormously satisfying.

I got to end it there. You guys were OK. You guys are both great. I want to I want to hear what he is, what he's what I can show. I can I do. I got to keep this in the words. Thank you, you guys anymore. You're you're a great team and I appreciate you doing this, OK. All right. We'll see you. All right.

Take care. Thank you. OK, so there's a new voting demographic out there. They're calling them rage moms. You've heard of security moms and hockey moms and soccer moms. Well, these are moms who think America is going to hell in a hand cart, which it is, and they're pissed about it. They're not getting any help. They're tired of being parents and caregivers and teachers and everything all at once. And they're pissed that this is an actual quote.

One of them said, I'm not making this up. The rage lives in my hands, rolls down my fingers clenching to fist. I want to hurt someone that's a mom. So we thought that's a public service. We probably should give you some tips on how to know if you're living with a rage. Mom, for example, all the news clippings on the fridge are about hunting accidents. She drinks more love by the box and crushes the box on her forehead.

The little note in your lunchbox as fuck you when you tell her you'd like the crusts cut off your bread, she says. And I like a duck that shits rubies. The first rule of her book club is never talk about book club during family game night. She wants to play Russian roulette. The last month made her love Ellen more.

When you ask where babies come from, she says bad choices.

All right, he is the Oscar winning director and screenwriter whose new memoir is Chasing the Light Writing, Directing and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador and the Movie Game Oliver Stone. And I was saying to you before I could probably name about 10 other great movies you've made. You are one of my favorite directors. And what I learned from this book is, boy, making movies is Hard, which some of the movies that, you know, they were mainstream big movies and you were still fighting budgets, getting the money on the day you were shooting shit like that.

Here's my question to you. What movie could you not get greenlit today that you made back?

Well, I think it's very hard to get a movie made today. I think the subject matter has to be kosher, politically correct, and it has to be on. My movies were always rough-hewn and they were personal points of view. And, you know, they were pretty controversial. So I don't think that I would be doing very well today if I were out there as a young person. And the book is about, you know, the book is about those first 40 years of life.

Right. And how hard I struggle to make Platoon and Salvador Salvador and made in the same back to back in the same year to eighty five. Eighty six. And they they got me back in the game. I had already been successful with Midnight Express and Scarface, but I then I fell out of favor and then I come back with those two films. But you remember Bill, that those two films were not financed by American studios at all. They were not touched.

The subject of the Civil War in Salvador had no interest in the subject of a realistic Vietnam movie. No interest. It was so frustrating during those years. And I think that's what motivated me to write the book, to get it out to to to talk to fellow young film students and young people how difficult it is to get things made and done, period, to think for yourself, too. And I worry.

I wonder if you do also about what movies are not being made today, because we're not going to know what movies are made because we don't see them. But it seems like, based on what you're saying, that we're missing out. On a lot of stuff, what movies would you make today if you could if somebody gave you an unlimited budget and just said, yes, Oliver, I'm a huge fan, you go make it. What would you make?

I've I've had so many movies. It went through the pipeline and didn't get made. It's just almost 10 years of my life wasted. I mean, I spent a lot of time working on the My Lai massacre for Pikesville in 2007 seven. We almost made it. It was canceled because of the financier got scared. I worked on Martin Luther King, MLK for twice. And they they both didn't make it through because, again, it was controversial. I showed his not only his wisdom and his love of God and his religious side, but also his sexy side, his love of women.

And that touched on for sure. I tried to make. Oh, Jesus Christ. I tried to make. What was that movie script? It was a dozen of them. You cannot make a movie now. After two thousand one, you get into trouble. You know very well first hand. Oh, yeah. Making a movie critical of the US foreign policy. U.S. military is off limits. You can the Pentagon and the CIA have, as we know, cooperated with more than eight hundred films.

They give detailed instructions. They give equipment. It's a form of money they give men sometimes. So everybody that's made a war film, a war related show, has had to deal with that problem.

So what did you think this week of the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that came out? It put a kind of a bipartisan that wave of your hand. Is that your answer? I mean, it put a kind of a bipartisan stamp on the idea that there was extensive coordination. But and this is a Republican saying this between the republic, between the Trump campaign and Russia. I mean, this guy, Konstantin Kalanchoe, who we heard about, now they are naming him as a Russian intelligence officer.

He's G.R. you. He is. He was coordinating with Trump's campaign manager, Manafort. And your namesake, Roger Stone, organized the WikiLeaks dump 30 minutes after the Hollywood the Access Hollywood tape came out. You can't really think that a Russian president, the one that's in there now, should be able to rat fuck our elections like this.

Can you, Bill, I think you're I know one, you look too long and I think you're sophisticated enough to know that what you have to question everything that comes out of our intelligence agencies. If you haven't learned that by now, you've got a long way to go still because you think so. They're like agents. Agencies are not reliable. They've been screwing with America and going back to Vietnam War, going back to the Iraq war is the Afghan or Afghani wars.

It's very hard to find out the truth from them and everything. They published the rumors and all the the anonymous sources, the think tanks, the anti Russian, it all adds up into this ball of wax. It becomes enormous. And then you and they have people like you who are skeptical, generally believing it. I would really triple check everything. Every one of those sources and I when I read of it, wasn't that specific. It wasn't that specific.

And Manafort, you know, that it's they went they went they went after metaphore in a way that is it was it was bizarre. And the fact is that he wasn't that intelligent and he didn't have that much to say or do about any of this. He was trying to make some money in Ukraine.

What about the fact that this week, yesterday, Alexei Navalny, he's one of the main opposition leaders in Russia, was poisoned? Well, we'll see.

Also, this requires investigation. We're in a we're in a moment in time when anything, anything against about China or Russia is being broadcast loudly to the to the American people. We have a very effective Western media that does this all the time. You have to go back and you have been skeptical in the past and ask, why do we need enemies? Why do we need these enemies? Why do we want to make this into an issue? Why?

Well, listen, people, why do you think people people have associated your name with conspiracy? I've never seen you that way. I mean, the conspiracy theory really with JFK is I think most Americans would agree that it was not a lone gunman. That's the conspiracy is the Warren Report. But we seem to be in a place now where the conspiracies hide in plain sight with Trump. I mean, he's trying to take this election. You know, even Bond villains only tell their plot to James Bond.

This guy announces the whole world. He said the other day, basically, I'm screwing with the post office so that people can't mail in their ballot.

Listen, I'm not going to argue. I mean, I'm not voting for Trump. And I he is a he's a sad figure. And he was the wrong choice to be president. He can't handle the job. He really can. And I think people are seeing through his personality. But to make our foreign policy dependent on attacking Trump, to get rid of Trump and and creating a Cold War environment with China and with Russia and with other countries is crazy.

And this is stigmatisation is not a policy. So they're looking for everything possible to build up this Russia. James Bond, Dr.. No scenario. You think the Russians. I'm had been over there a lot. Do you think they sit around, think about America all the time? They don't care. They've got their own problems. They have a country that is vibrant and they want to make it work. They have a lot of issues like we do there.

They're not thinking about our elections as you think we are. We're so self obsessed with our own issues that we can't understand that other people don't look at it the same way they think about it. But meanwhile, keep in mind, Billy, you know damn well how many elections have we interfered with and how many countries in the world interfered with with money and all kinds of dirty tricks. Well, all of us, that double standard. Here you are.

You are what? You are always one of the most fascinating people I get to talk to.

And I just know you can't deal with it. You can't go with a group groupthink. No, I understand. I believe me to think for yourself. OK, I'm trying. All right. Thank you. I love the book. I read it in one Big Gulp and I recommend it highly. All of us go. Yeah.

All right. No time for duo's final backyard edition of Durel. Neuro, now that Fisher-Price is making a home office play set so kids can pretend they've been forced to work from home due to a deadly pandemic, they need to create other coronavirus inspired fun, like the Fisher-Price drive up covid Testing Center and the Fisher-Price grocery store Mass Confrontation Playset available in toy stores everywhere. Right next to the stand six feet away from me Elmo neurosurgeon's.

Just about every Republican now appears heavily armed in their campaign ads. Democrats have to appeal to their voters in the same way by holding up a bong. That's right. And don't just hold it. Hit that shit.

I'm Dianne Feinstein and I approve this message.

I know liberals are for everyone voting, but no rule, people who post comments on PornHub aren't allowed to vote. I'm sorry, but with civil society hanging by a thread, do we really need to hear from the guy who feels the need to share his thoughts on M.F. step mom mistake's son for dad? It's always the same thought. I'd fuck that.

No, I don't want to tell click bait writers how to do their job, but there is no nasal polyp treatment that everyone should know about. Here, let me help you out. If you want to write a headline about nasal polyps. A doctor looked in this hot woman's nose and what he found will shock. You think this hot woman doesn't have nasal polyps? Think again or rebel Wilson has a perfect reaction to this hot woman's nasal polyps.

No, I don't care how long you've been into politics, you have to admit you've never seen anything like this before. A lady with three boobs. And finally, new rule now that Republicans have begun welcoming Kuhnen into the political mainstream, it's time Americans learn what it is. Kuhnen is a growing movement within the Republican Party that believes the world is being run behind the scenes by a small group of elitist liberals and Hollywood celebrities who are both Satan worshippers and pedophiles who eat babies and wear red shoes to signal their membership in this group, a group that includes Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks, Ellen, the pope and every president since Reagan, and that there are two heroes who will put a stop to this president, Donald Trump, and cue himself the anonymous leader who founded Kuhnen with one overarching theme that you're being lied to and everything you think you know is really the opposite.

What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. That's why it makes sense within Kuhnen that Trump, who most Americans see is a sex creep who walks in on half dressed beauty pageant contestants and tells underage girls he'll be dating them in 10 years actually is the Christian savior who will destroy these sex fiends. It is also why it makes perfect sense that I libertine atheist, pot smoking, Trump hating Bill Maher Amcu I am, which I revealed on this show two years ago, which is why it is true.

I am who you don't believe me. Just ask yourself, is there any. Not if it's not.

Well it's two years later and I'm going to tell you again. I am who I am and true Kuis followers know it's the truth because it makes the least sense. Think people. That's all I'm saying. Take what you thought, flip it and then assume the opposite of the opposite of what you know is not true. Then and only then are you thinking like a true kuhnen. And if you need any more proof that I am. Q Just remember that after I was revealed as Q in twenty eighteen, this old picture came out of me wearing red shoes, which of course I wore back then for the same reason Trump acted like a disgusting pervert for the last 30 years, because I knew this day would come where I would have to prove that I am what I'm not.

And don't be intimidated by the so-called sane people who say we're stupid and gullible and lonely, aimless losers, oh, you can make fun of us all you want, but the joke is on you because on is now so mainstream that 71 Republicans running for office this year have espoused Kuhnen beliefs. That's more Republicans than believe in evolution or vegetables. And we're very proud that one of our candidates, Marjorie Taylor Green, who has been brave enough to say publicly that Hillary likes voodoo dolls and Planned Parenthood performs human sacrifices, she just won the House primary in Georgia.

She's going to be in Congress. Deal with it. Trump calls her a future Republican star and she has called his presidency a once in a lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan worshipping pedophiles out. Exactly. So laugh now if you want, but just remember that in the Republican Party, today's lunatic is tomorrow's mainstream representative. Yeah, sure. Call her crazier than a shit house rat today. And for years, you'll be calling her the winner of the Iowa caucus.

Same with Joe Ray Perkins, she could be the next Republican senator from Oregon and she says, I stand with President Trump.

I said with humility, stand with you and the team. Hmm. Thank you, Joe. Yes, we've made great progress in the two years since I revealed myself. I don't take all the credit, but attention must be paid. Q Merchandise is now a staple of Trump rallies, and President Trump himself has just this week now embraced Kuhnen publicly. We're blowing up bitch. Get on the Q tip. Michael Flynn was the national security adviser of this country and here he is taking the Q And on oath where we go one, we go all.

We're for real motherfuckers, and what's so great now is that I can speak to my people, my cute people with complete freedom because the liberals just think I'm doing a comedy bit here. Such idiots, these liberals actually believe Donald Trump doesn't like me. That's what they said about Robert Mueller, that he was Trump's big enemy. When few people know Trump feigned collusion with Russia in order to enlist Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup by Obama, Mueller was his work wife, not his enemy.

Last week, these morons actually thought Trump was insulting me when he tweeted about me. He's totally shot, looks terrible, exhausted, gaunt and weak. If there was ever a good reason for no shutdown. Check out this jerk. Yeah, check out this jerk. He's saying check out our movement. Don't be fooled just because in various tweets and at rallies, Trump has referred to me as dopey, not smart, a dumb ass, a lowlife, a dummy, a moron, a crazy maniac, stupid, failing, pathetic, bloated, third rate, insane, wacko, sick stone-Cold crazy and the dumbest man on television.

That's his way of saying, I'm with you, bro. So, look, if you're thinking of coming over to CU or even if you think you might be Jewish, here are some tips for voting in this vital upcoming election. First, continue to follow blindly every single thing I say that's most important. Second, don't believe Election Day is really on a Tuesday. It's not. They tried that trick every time. In fact, this November, if you really want your voice heard, boycott the election by not voting at all.

In fact, let me remind you of the key instructions for Election Day that I gave you two years ago.

Do not leave your house on November six for any reason, even to buy vape juice. If you have a basement, go there or better get in the trunk of your car closet and don't leave for whatever reason. Just stay in the trunk of your car until you hear from me.

Stay in the trunk, stay in the trunk, stay in the trunk.

But if you do somehow get to the polls, my fellow Q and honors, of course, go with pride and pull the lever for the one man that can make America great again, Kanye West. OK, that's our show, I want to thank my guest, John Kasich, the Reverend Dr. William Barber, the second Thomas Frank and Oliver Stone. We'll be back next week from the studio. Good night.

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.