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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. How are you? Thank you very much, people. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here. Great to be back. All right. Thank you so much. Please. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it so much. Thank you. But come on.
We want to get to this shit, don't we? And a lot to catch up on in the news this week. I mean, ooh, wow, things are strange at the White House. Remember that cocaine that Biden left out there? I think they found it. Because... OK, so...
Our life now is dominated by tariffs. Vibe change, you know, and they're on, they're off, they're off, they're on, they're on, they're off. I mean, and everybody this week, Trump, everybody gets them. Penguins, you fucking... I don't care if you just pay, you're going to pay tariffs.
So he put tariffs on every country in the world, and of course the stock market plunged. And then the next day, he was like, well, I didn't say Simon Says. And then the stock market rose. So it's fun. It's fun stuff. What's really fun for me is watching the Trump cultists...
be so excited about the tariffs, they're the greatest thing in the world, and then have to take back their... what they said about that when he takes back the tariff. It's like, you know, thank you, best president ever, for ordering the tariffs and restoring America. He did what? These tariffs have got to go. I've always said that. They've got to go. Now...
The White House says 75 countries have already called up begging us to make a deal on the tariffs. And then somebody asked, who? What are the countries? And they said, no, Kentucky. They're totally real, okay? They're on a list that my girlfriend has. She goes to a different school in Canada. So...
So, OK, so the tariffs got taken back except for 10% on everybody, but China is up to 145%. We're in a true trade war with China. And this is very worrisome to me because China, you know, kind of powerful. And they said today, you know, if we continue doing this, they're going to take other, other countermeasures if we keep infringing on China's interests substantively. I don't know what those other countermeasures are, but I have a bad feeling they're going to either leak out of a lab...
Or leave Jews with nowhere to eat on Christmas. Wait. Wait. Wait. It's not all bad news. We're bringing back coal. No, really. Trump signed an executive order this week. We're bringing back coal? Not for energy, just blackface. And, uh...
But, look, there is reason for hope, I swear to God, because the Supreme Court, yes, our Supreme Court, ruled unanimously if the Trump administration mistakenly deports someone to El Salvador, which they did, someone who is not a gang member who is here illegally, the Supreme Court said, yeah, you've got to get him back. And the Trump administration said, we can't. We can't? Really? We can get a guy back from space, but not El Salvador? So, no. No, we've got to...
Get this guy back. We got to do it. Now the question becomes, who is going to go down there and sort through all these sweaty Latin men wearing nothing but T-shirts and boxers? And Lindsey Graham said, anything for my country. Thank you. You sound like a great crowd. And now for what I know you've all been waiting for, I'd like to give you my book report on my visit to the White House.
Okay. As you know, 12 days ago I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock, because we share a belief that there's got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away. And let me first say that to all the people who treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you're ridiculous. Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I haven't
I have no power. I'm a fucking comedian, and he's the most powerful leader in the world. I'm not the leader of anything, except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there's got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute. So, thank you. So, okay, so meet up in person. Maybe it'll be different. Spoiler alert, it was.
First good sign, before I left for the Capitol, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the president had said about me. Things like stupid, dummy, low-life dummy, sleazebag, sick, sad, stone-cold crazy, really a dumb guy, fired like a dog, his show is dead. There's 60. I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it, which he did. Yay!
which he did with good humor. And I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. Oh, my God, Bill, are you going to say something nice about him? What I'm going to do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it. And if that's not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don't give a fuck. So, no, I didn't go MAGA.
And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to. After we left the Oval Office, he showed me the little room off the office, you know, the one where Clinton used to... Okay. The blowjob room. Okay. Well, not anymore. That's where they keep the merch now. It is. And...
And he gave me a bunch of hats, but he didn't ask me to take a picture in one, which I appreciated. The guy I met is not the person who the night before the dinner shit-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this dinner was a bad idea and what a deranged asshole I was. I read it and thought, oh, what a lovely way to welcome someone to your house. But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there.
Now, does Trump want respect? Of course. Who doesn't? My friend said to me, what are you going to wear to the White House? I said, I don't know, but I'm not going to dress like Zelensky, I'll tell you that. But, okay, just for starters, he laughs. I'd never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including in himself. And it's not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it. And I thank you for that. Uh, no. Thank you.
Okay, example. In the Oval Office, he was showing me the portraits of presidents, and he pointed to Reagan and said, in all seriousness, you know the best thing about him? His hair. I said, well, there was also that whole bringing down communism thing, waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button to get pushed and I go through the trap door. LAUGHTER
But no, he laughed, he got it. I said to him at one point, Mr. President, you know the dog? That's unusual in the White House. He said, well, a lot of the presidents, they had a dog for political reasons. I said, no, I love dogs. That's what that is. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's true. I'm telling you what happened.
At one point, we were walking through his amazing, it is an amazing tour of the whole house. And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but it must have been something with the 2020 election, because I know he used the word lost. And I distinctly remember saying, wow, I never thought I'd hear you say that. He didn't get mad. He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public.
Look, I get it. It doesn't matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian. It matters who he is on the world stage. I'm just taking it as a positive that this person exists because everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy. Bob, Kid Rock, told me the night before, he said, if you want to get a word in edgewise, you're going to have to cut him off. He'll just go on. Not at all.
I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected. People who don't look you in the eye. People who don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn't track like, what? None of that with him. And he mostly steered the conversation to, what do you think about this? I know, your mind is blown. So is mine. There were...
There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke or contradicted something, and no problem. At dinner, he was asking me about the nuclear situation in Iran in a very genuine, hey, I think you're a smart guy, I want your opinion, sort of way. And I said...
Well, obviously you're privy to things about it, I'm not, but for what it's worth, I thought the Obama deal was worth letting play out because we made Iran destroy 98% of the uranium and they were 15 years away from a bomb. And then I said to him, but we got rid of that. You got rid of that. He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic. He took it in. I told him I thought parts of his plan for Gaza were wacky, but that I had supported him in the idea that Gaza could be Dubai instead of hell.
I told him he was wrong when he tweeted the night before that I was critical of all things Trump. Not true. Check the tapes. Moving Israel's embassy to Jerusalem? Loved it.
The border did need to be controlled. I'm glad the cops are getting their morale back. DEI had gone too far. Biological men shouldn't be playing women's sports. Europe should pay for their defense. And of course, it makes sense that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees, like the million Syrians who wound up in Germany when Saudi Arabia took none. He said to me, "You're right, they took none." I said, "Well, you should remind your boyfriend in Saudi Arabia that the next time you see him."
He laughed. I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That's just how it went down. Make of it what you will. Me, I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days. He was even okay when I checked him on the orangutan lawsuit. He was.
You know, he said to Dana White, you know, Bill said my father was an orangutan and I really love my father. And I said, well, Mr. President, I did that because I didn't like what you were doing regarding Obama's birth origins. I thought that was low. Again, no anger, just a little smile as if to say, yeah, I get it.
The most surreal part of the whole night was when I got home. I flew back right after the dinner, and I'm in bed watching 60 Minutes from the night before. And there's Trump in one of their stories, standing at a podium in a room that looked to me like one of the rooms and podium -- places we'd just been in. And he's ranting, "Disgusting! You're a terrible person!" And I'm like, "Who's that guy? What happened to Glinda the Good Witch?"
And why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy? And I'm not saying it's our responsibility to do that. It's not. I'm just reporting exactly what I saw over two and a half hours. I went into the mine, and that's what's down there. A crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fucked up. It's just not as fucked up as I thought it was.
And I have no illusions now that I'm back to work at my job that he might start a new list. Because I don't have a good feeling and will be critical about a lot of what he's doing. The trade war and disappearing people, ruling by decree, threatening judges, gutting the government with glee.
But I also think he now understands I have a job to do, or at least he did on this night, because he said to me early on that he'd seen our last episode, which was the Friday before this dinner, and he said, "I thought maybe you'd be nice, but you hit me really hard." I did, because I'm not gonna pull my punches that presidents get to propose a third term for themselves. He understood that, and without animus. That doesn't mean he's not gonna try to do it.
At one point, I said to him, "You're scaring people. Do you really want to be scaring your own citizens so much?" And I know now you're all saying, "And what did he say to that?" Honestly, I don't remember. But it wasn't, "Okay, I'll stop."
So MAGA fans, don't worry. Your boy gave me nothing. Just hats. Hats and a very generous amount of time and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend, even though I'm not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner. My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in the blowjob room. We were. And he said, you know, I've heard from a lot of people who really liked that we're having this dinner. Not all, but a lot.
And I said, same. A lot of people told me they loved it, but not all. And we agreed. The people who don't even want us to talk, we don't like you. Don't talk? As opposed to what? Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25-hour speeches into the wind? Really? That's what liberals have? He takes the piss out of everybody else and we can hold ours?
Okay, that's my report. You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured, and why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know, and I can't answer, and it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw, and I wasn't high. Damn, missed opportunity. All right, we got a great show. Here's Morgan and Josh Rotherman here. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. But first up...
Thank you. He's the former White House chief strategist under President Trump. We'll now host the podcast, War Room, Steve Bannon. Okay. Well, Steve, you got on the end of my standing ovation, so let's pretend they get it for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would not be doing my job if they gave me a standing ovation. Yeah, well. Well, we're going to talk about that. But first, I want to know if you're okay. Personally, I know you were just in prison. How was it? Did you meet any nice guys? Yeah.
Since this show will play in Danbury on Saturday night on CNN, I want to say hi to all the men in Danbury. There's a lot of good men there. The prison's very tough, very dangerous because of the mass incarceration of the nine violent drug offenders. These young men that get put away for 15, 20, 25 years in a very small, over 100-year-old prison like Danbury. It can get very dangerous because drugs get in there, K2, and it's a dangerous place. But I had a...
amazing experience there. Really? Yeah. And is it a tough one? I know we hear a lot about the Aryan Brotherhood. Were they in there? That's in me. Did they give you extra food? That's...
There's a tranche to prison. I wasn't in a camp. I was in a prison. There's a tranche to prisons. Medium prisons is where prison politics is. It blows. There's no prison politics. Oh, there's obviously separation, and people have what they call cars. So, Danbury, you're in the New York car, the Dominican car, the Puerto Rican car, the Mexican car. Can you stay with your own, except the times you're in the yard and working out, or like I was a teacher over in the education department. I taught civics.
Having been there for insurrection. America, ladies and gentlemen. That is America.
I'm going to suggest a policy. I've never heard this, but how about this? No politicians in prison. You can impeach them. You can put them to court. We disagree about that. That's one reason why you were in prison. For a misdemeanor. Okay. For contempt. All right. Well, I'm talking about Trump. Oh, they're coming after Trump. I think once you go to the... Well, you guys started with lock her up, okay? Once you...
Let me just get it out. Hang on. Hang on. And she should have been locked up, and we didn't go after her. I guess we don't agree then. We're not supposed to agree. But I think once you go to the... One good night at the White House shouldn't make you soft, Bill. You're the one who just got out of prison. Okay. But you were there because you refused to testify to the January 6th committee, which was led by that fiery liberal Liz Cheney.
By the way, by the way, a group of people that crawled on their belly to the White House to get for the first time in our history preemptive blanket pardons for every member of the J6 committee and their staffs. That's never been because they lied and perjured themselves the entire time. And that investigation, regardless if they have pardons, there's still going to be an investigation. And when they get called before they can't take the Fifth Amendment, the thing was totally rigged and totally corrupt. I didn't do it for Donald Trump. I did it to stand up for the Constitution.
That committee was totally rigged. And I didn't mind going to prison. I brought a copy tonight. Here it is. The Constitution. Can I read a passage to you? Amendment 22. No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice. And yet you keep talking about Trump's... Maybe you should have this. Oh, yeah.
I'll get you to sign it backstage and underline it. Look, President Trump didn't bring up running for a third term. Myself and others brought up running for a third term. President Trump is going to run for a third term, and President Trump is going to be elected again on the afternoon of January 20th of 2029. He's going to be President of the United States. Okay, but the thing I just read in there...
It seemed like there was no wriggle room there. It seemed like it was just, you know, eight or ten words that said only two times. We have a team of people that are working. A team? A team. How can a team do something about that? I don't care if the team is 12 trillion people. The words are still the words. Bill.
Every day in federal courts, right now in federal courts, there's 120 lawsuits on what President Trump's doing for his Article II rights on the unified executive theory. But he's chief executive, he's commander-in-chief, and he's chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer. There's 100. And they're running to court every day to sue President Trump, all because the interpretation of this. The interpretation of this is open for interpretation. How could it be open? Could I have it back? No.
I'm sorry to be... No person. You would agree he's a person. Okay, shall be elected. He was elected to the office. That's the office of the president more than twice. Twice is once and then another time.
I don't see what the team is finding. Okay. We'll disagree. Listen, Bill. In 2014, you talk about long odds. In 2014, when I backed President Trump when I was running Breitbart, they said I'd turn Breitbart into Trumpravda. Okay? The odds there, he pulled at zero.
Then later in 2021, after he got back to Mar-a-Lago, when Fox abandoned him and the Murdochs abandoned him, the Republican Party abandoned him, the odds were longer then. So our group, the MAGA movement and the tip of the spear of the MAGA movement, we've had long odds before. You know what? And we've come out winning twice. And we're going to come out, we've got long odds on this. We're going to come out winning a third time on the afternoon of the 20th of January, 2029. He's going to be president of the United States. Okay. Okay.
By the way, I did say to him at one point that, you know, it actually works out better that you lost the 2020 election because... 100%. Well, because... What?
The 2020 election was stolen. It was stolen. I'm sorry. But it's better that happened. We had four years to prepare. Look at everything he's accomplishing now. He had all these different groups run by Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt, these think tanks that were able to come up with, we could flood the zone with 10 or 12 things. That took four years for President Trump to think through and understand what loyalty is, understand what his program. It was much better if they hadn't stolen the election in 2020 to let President Trump have a second term where they almost all,
already had him surrounded. Now, look what he's doing now on the world stage every day. He's doing the biggest changes since the end of World War II. That wasn't my point with it. My point was that it's like a superhero movie, franchise, or no, movie. You know, a movie has three acts. You know, a hero rises, but then to get to the third act, you have to go down in the middle. You have to get to the point where, oh, it's
We're down at our lowest point. He got that right away. He understood that. You don't seem to understand. No, no, no, no. You're pitching me that Trump's on the hero's journey. That's what you're saying? Bill Maher's saying that Trump's on the hero's journey. I'm saying that's what a super movie does, and I don't watch any of them. I'm just saying... As an arc.
As an arc. It's a better story. So why don't you just admit you lost the middle one? Okay, let me move on to Elon Musk. Here are some of your quotes. Elon Musk is a truly evil person. Stopping him has become a personal issue for me. I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the inauguration. Well, that didn't happen, but I'm sure you're still on it. Also, you say Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments on the country. Wow. Wow.
Sounds like you're trying to make up your mind about the guy, but is... Are you the guy who keyed my Tesla?
This puts you in league with all the far lefties who are burning Teslas. Well, remember, he was a darling of the far left. The oligarchs in Silicon Valley were all created. They were all progressive left and they were all created by the left. Except for Musk, who saw the math a little earlier. All the rest of the oligarchs, and remember, Zuckerberg goes on trial on Monday at Meta by Trump's FTC.
And for what he did, the whistleblower said, we sold us out to the Chinese Communist Party. Those guys all had their road to Damascus at 11 o'clock p.m. on the 5th of November when we won. And all of a sudden, they want to be MAGA. I don't trust them. I don't believe in them. They're totally self-centered. And they're a product of the apartheid state that was created by progressive Democrats.
And so now we have to break it up. And I think you're going to see President Trump's Justice Department, FTC, FCC, really go after these guys, starting with Mark Zuckerberg. There's a lot in there I could probably agree with. But my question is, if Trump is always right about everything, right, you think that he's right about the tax... No, no, I don't think he's right about everything.
President Trump and I disagree on policy. Name another one he's wrong about. What else is he wrong about? Tariffs? I didn't say wrong. I said we don't agree. Oh, so he's never wrong. No, tariffs. Has he ever wronged? Sometimes I think that... Oh, you're in trouble. No, no. The terrorist policy... You know he's watching. The terrorist policy has been brilliant. The terrorist policy has been brilliant. Don, I'd watch this one. And by the way...
The five countries, by the way, Bill, the five countries that come back are Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, and Vietnam are already in. When he runs for a third term, is there any Democrat who scares you that he could be running against? Because I guess if we allow that, it could be Obama.
Absolutely. I think that'd be great. Alien versus predator. Let's do it. President Trump already said... President Trump already said... That's kind of a worse insult to Trump, I think. If you want to bring President Obama, who I think has lost his fastball, but go ahead and bring him. Okay. Okay, right now, all the governors you have, I don't think everybody else is standing up to Trump. You're going to have to run someone like a Stephen A. Smith
or someone in your kind of celebrity category. That'll be the Democratic nominee that would have the best shot at President Trump. But I think he's unbeatable. I think he's unbeatable because the coalition that he's built is only going to get bigger because he's bringing back American manufacturing jobs to working class people. And the Democratic Party...
Abandon working class people for the credentialed class that you talk about all the time. And you can't cosplay being a populist if you're not prepared to take hard things like the trade deal. I get it. Okay. You said, you quoted yourself there for flooding the zone. That's one of your, flood the zone with shit. This is one of your most famous quotes. The real opposition is the media, and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit. So this discussion we had,
Was this real or was this shit flooding? I'm just asking you. You say you do this, so I want to know if this was a real or a shit flood zone thing. Bill, it's real time, so it's got to be real. All right, thank you. Steve Bannon, you made it out of prison. I hope I see you soon. All right, thank you very much. Time to meet our panel. Thank you.
Okay, hi guys. There they are. He is lead global security analyst for Washington Post Intelligence and author of Chaos Under Heaven, Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century. Oh, perfect guy for this show. Josh Rogin. All right, he is the host of Piers Morgan Uncensored on YouTube. Piers Morgan. Thank you. Thank you.
OK, gentlemen. By the way, that was brilliant, what you said about the Trump dinner. Oh, thank you. Because I was dying to know. We all were. It was the most extraordinary group of people ever assembled at the White House. But the way you told that...
especially the bit about all the abuse he gave you, and then he signed the chip. The last time I interviewed him, he ended up issuing four statements about me of increasing ferocity, and the last one said, Piers Morgan's so dead he's now catching flies. And then about three or four months later, the phone went over, Piers, it's Donald, are we good? And I realised that exactly as you found, that you don't take any of this stuff seriously.
The frontman stuff, the theatre, the president, the persona he puts on it, that is not the real Donald Trump. And I think you saw...
I just wanted to report exactly what I saw. I did it to the best of my abilities. Counterpoint? Yes. Counterpoint? Yeah. You know, Bill, I think you're right in saying that people have made too much of this, okay? It's not the Alta Summit. You're not Churchill. Kid Rock is not Stalin. Trump's sugar shit is an FDR, okay? So, yes, I believe too much has been made about this, but I think you've fallen into the trap. I think I represent 99% of the Internet when I say this, is that you've...
played the game of proximity is principle. And what people are worried about is not your motivation. We believe you. We love you, Bill. Everybody loves Bill, right? I'm not questioning your motivation. I'm questioning Trump's, okay? And if we can say that you went there in good faith, but maybe, just maybe, he wasn't there in good faith. I mean, you sold him on the Iran deal and he took it in. I mean, give me a break, okay? So the idea here is that your motivation is sound, but what's the impact?
And I think a lot of people out there, fans of yours, people will love you. People who are fans of you, like me, I've been a fan of you. You don't have to patronize me, dude. I don't know you. I never met you. I'm just saying that this comes from a place of love. Not everybody has to like it. That's what we said. There are people who didn't want it to happen at all. You sound like one of them. It's okay. No, no, no. I just...
Did you hear what I said? Yeah. Like, what is the alternative to not talking? Just sit at your lunch table and don't talk to anybody? Talk to him. I've interviewed Trump. Here's his interview with Trump. That's not an interview. This was not an interview. I agree with the principle of engagement. I'm just saying from his perspective, you have to understand that people out there know, all Americans know, that for him, this was a PR stunt. And in his view, you were a prop in that PR stunt.
OK. Yeah, but you see, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. That doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do. But if you go on social media for five minutes now, you just have these tribal fury raging all day long. Everyone's got to be implacably there, implacably here.
Actually, most Americans and most Brits, they're not like that. So there's this screaming going on between these tribes and actually walking across, you know, across that line, sitting down, having dinner, having a laugh, having a chat, and then the idea that Bill Maher is now going to stop criticising Donald Trump... I didn't do it... ..is preposterous. I didn't do it before. I didn't do it in the monologue. I didn't do it with Steve Bannon. And the fact that...
The fact that you began your little rant with the Internet, that tells me everything. You take your cues from the Internet. Good luck. No, no. Listen. You know, the Internet is a cesspool that just wants to fight. Yes.
And it's okay. I support what you're trying to do. I'm just saying the expectation that Donald Trump is going to be changed by... I said in the piece I did not think that was going to happen. In that case, then go with that. I love the people on either side who ignore the parts they don't like and then just... And I just did it. It wasn't like it was three weeks ago.
I mean, watch it again. Maybe you'll find something new in it. Although, Bill, I don't know what the hell you said to him over dinner, but all hell broke loose within about three days of that dinner. LAUGHTER
Were you giving him economic advice in there? He was doing the tariffs well before that. I mean, that is one subject that didn't come up. I mean, look, tariffs, did I ever think I was going to be talking about tariffs every day? I really didn't. I did not see that coming up. And it's fucking boring. I don't like tariffs. It's, you know, it's, look, I think I'm generally with the consensus, which is that this is some chaotic situation.
to bring back an era in this country that has just gone with the wind, the manufacturing. But I don't know. I was shocked to see that the failing New York Times... You're even sounding like him. Their headline a week ago was, Global Trade Robs U.S., Trump Says. Does He Have a Point? Hmm.
Yeah. I mean, I think Trump has this amazing ability to correctly diagnose a problem and then to bungle the solution with a policy that's totally incoherent and incompetent. And I think that's what we're seeing here. I mean, if you think about it,
It's obvious that they don't have a strategy because the strategy changes every day and the people at the top of the administration have no idea what the strategy is. They can't articulate it. And saying that you're going to only have a trade war with China and not the rest of the world is kind of like saying, oh, don't worry, we're not going to burn down the house. We're just going to set fire to the kitchen.
and then everything's going to be okay. And it's reckless, and people know that, and real people suffer from the consequences of the collateral damage that comes from jerking back and forth into, we're going to have huge tariffs, then we're not going to have huge tariffs. I don't think anybody likes that. But isn't he just doing what he always does, Donald Trump? He'll take an extreme position. He starts there. He throws everything against the wall. He sees how it plays out, and he starts to game it, and then he starts to work out what's popular, what's not. Where has he reached in one week?
Total mayhem to start with. Markets freaking, everything collapsing, everyone going crazy. Liberals around the world going to anaphylactic shock. Fine. Fine. They literally do that when he wakes up, so it's fine. But look where we ended up the week. Markets roaring back.
And actually, China, who is the main target of his eye, and always has been, I've interviewed him probably more than many journalists alive, he's always gone on about China ripping off America. And on that, he's absolutely right. It has. And now he's ended up in a place where it's United States against China.
I would actually back the United States to win a trade war right now with China and put China back in its box. What I didn't like was him taking on the whole of Europe and Mexico and Canada and other allies. But I think you're now seeing the week ending with a slightly more coherent strategy, which may have been his game all along. Wouldn't surprise me. I don't think so. I don't think this is my 4-D chess. We don't know, right? Yeah, we do know. We do know now. You think it's 4-degree chess? It's hungry, hungry hippos. I don't think.
OK. That's what it is. It's the economic version of hungry, hungry hippos. It's a president who doesn't play by the normal rules. He's not an establishment guy. He trusts his instinct and his gut, and his gut is often right and sometimes it's wrong. And it's often wrong. Yeah. And when it's wrong, real people suffer because the collateral damage is catastrophic. OK. That's fine, but...
And real people lose their jobs and their businesses while he's trying to figure out what the zeitgeist wants him to do on this or that. And by the way, I wrote a book about Trump in China. I'm not against standing up to China. Steve Bannon was a primary source of my book. I've known him for 10 years. I'm on board with...
protecting ourselves from China. The problem is, if you do it without thinking it through, then you undermine the actual real effort to protect us. But China blinked a bit today. China said, well, we're going to raise ours, and then they said, well, that's the last time we're going to raise it. Now, that looked to me like a little mini blink. It's them saying, well, that's our ceiling for this race right now, and what Trump does next would be fascinating. Look, I'm not saying any of this is pretty. Okay, so this is boring, like I said, Tara. Sorry. LAUGHTER
You guys are boring. I'm trying to make it interesting. Well, you're failing.
So let me ask another question about this, because what worries me is that trade wars can become real wars, can they not? Sure. I mean, I'm thinking about Japan in the 30s. Absolutely. I mean, we took away the oil, I think. I don't remember. Right? And it's something, something Pearl Harbor. Absolutely right. Right. Okay, so China has been a frenemy for, I don't know, a long time now, decades, which is we had a lot of big differences, but we were tied together by the money. Sure.
Sure. You take away the money and you take away the food from front of me. Right.
Now they're just the enemy, and we don't have this bond that's keeping us married. Right. But that codependence also keeps our economy hostage to theirs. It's a codependent relationship that we have to manage carefully because there are real security concerns and human rights concerns that we can't ignore. So managing that, the most complex relationship in the world between the two biggest powers in the world, is the most important thing in our lifetime, in our generation, for our leaders. And to do it on the fly,
changing this and that is irresponsible. Now, so we can agree that we have a problem. We can agree that it's a complex problem. But we need a solution that's actually thought through and that we can understand and articulate. But can you also accept it could work? I mean, it could work. Yeah, but that's a hell of a risk to take on a win. I would not take the odds. Right.
You know, China's not the same as it was in 2017 when Trump was president at first. They're much stronger. They're much more powerful. They have a lot of relationships. And when we wage a trade war on the rest of the world at the same time, we're essentially pushing them into China's waiting arms because you can wage a war on China, but you can't wage a war on every country in the world. The thing I learned this week reading a couple of people, Fareed Zakaria mostly, he was great on it, but a few people brought up this point that I think really went under the radar is that we're not a country...
who's being suckered and doing terrible and getting our ass kicked. Everything is always, everybody's taking advantage. And, you know, just some stats that are out there. 2008, the U.S. economy was about the same size as the European Union. Now it's twice.
Went from $14 to $28 trillion, and they only went up to $15. Okay? 1990, average U.S. wages were 20% greater than the overall average in every industrialization. Now they're 40% higher. $80,000. A lot of this stuff you don't realize because, I don't know, I'm not going to say Americans are complainers. Obviously, if your life isn't going great and you're struggling, and a lot of people are, that's very real to you. But Mississippi, I read...
Our poor estate is richer than France, richer than the U.K., richer than Japan. So we're doing this sort of on a false premise. Also, I thought this was really interesting. Wages. I mean, the...
wage gap has not really changed since 1960. If you add in all the money that goes from taking it from rich people for benefits and so forth, it's pretty much the same as it was in 1960. I don't think people are using this model to make their decisions about the economy. I think a lot of people with the tariffs are like, you know, we're so fucked, the system is just corrupt, so throw it all out. Just...
We need something drastic. Just break everything. And what's there to lose? You have a lot to lose. Your 401K, your car that you can't afford now. You have a lot to lose. I think, Bill, I think you're exactly right on this point. I think what Trump has done, again, in classic Trump fashion, is identified a real problem. The benefits of globalization since the end of the Cold War were not evenly distributed amongst the rich and the poor. And that was a failing of Western governments.
But Trump's solution, while identifying the problem correctly, is to slash benefits for the poor and give a tax cut to the rich. OK? So how does that fix that problem? It's a classic example of telling people that he hears their pain and then instituting a solution that is liable to make it worse. I would say that, look, the establishment stewards of the US economy...
going back 50, 60, 70 years, have led America, notwithstanding your completely accurate assessment of those particular issues, but let's not forget that America has $37 trillion in debt. As Elon Musk keeps warning...
America could go bust if it's not careful. So this idea that all the experts who've presided over the economy for decades really know what they're talking about, I think is for the birds. That's a straw man. Well, maybe. I'm happy to be a straw man, but $37 trillion says it's not a straw man. Well, here's the thing that you don't understand and that President Trump doesn't understand. Please educate me. The trade deficit and the budget deficit... APPLAUSE
It's a very simple... I'm a failed economics student, so bear with me. But the trade deficit and the budget deficit... And talk show guests. No. Just a joke. Just a joke. My last appearance on Real Time. Just a joke. The trade deficit and the budget deficit are two different things. They're two different things. They're not the same thing. So trying to manipulate the trade deficit by having us buy bananas from, you know, import the production of bananas is bonkers. And the budget deficit is a total
different thing that has to do with government. All right, let me change the subject. I want to talk about Abreu Garcia. He is the Venezuelan gentleman. He is legal in this country. Well, he's not in this country anymore. They packed him off to a prison in El Salvador because they were rambling up gang members. They pretty much are pretty 100% sure he was not in a gang either, okay? Deportation flights.
Trump has had 241 of them. Biden had 232 in his last couple of months when he finally got religion on the border. So those are about the same. The difference is that Biden wasn't taken to a foreign prison. I mean, this is really... Based on a tattoo? Wow. Hey, baristas, watch out. So...
I just hope that, I mean, this is wrong in my view, terribly wrong, but the left needs to realize that when you go too far, whether it's the border stays completely open or stuff to do with racism or gender, when they get in power, they're going to go the pendulum twice as far the other way wrong. So just know that. Yeah.
Absolutely right. If you want to hate on centrists. Yeah, I mean, look, the key problem with this is the lack of due process, and it's coming back to haunt the administration. Because when you get a guy like this who, according to a ruling in a court in 2019, was not supposed to be deported back...
to El Salvador because of the risk to his life from other gangs. We haven't heard from this. We don't know where he is in this prison. Is he alive? Is he going to stay alive? Will the gangs that were threatening him enough for a U.S. court to say he should not be deported back there, will they get to him? So I think this is an existential threat to this guy's life.
And let's not pretend that Donald Trump can't pick the phone up to the president of El Salvador. Of course he can. Of course he can. They're paying millions of dollars to facilitate these guys being put into prison. And the whole Supreme Court unanimously said, so let's hope that happens. Yeah. And they said he has rights, habeas corpus rights. What?
You know, human beings have rights, even illegal aliens, even alleged terrorists, even alleged gangsters. They have human rights. We don't give them human rights. They're born with them. They're innate. Some of them are not alleged. And we can respect them or we can trample on them. Some of them are convicted rapists and murderers. OK, but we don't... I don't think most... Yeah, but most Americans are not going to have a problem with convicted rapists and murderers in the country. I still have a problem sending him to a foreign prison. Yes, it's called cruel and unusual punishment, which is also in the Constitution.
Why? Why? Does it make a lot of difference? It does. Yes, of course it does. You can't get them back, so that's a pretty big difference. Well, that is the problem with this one, yeah. I agree. It's one of the problems. Why send our prisoners to a foreign prison? It's basically a black site. The cruelty is the point. It's crazy. And the cruelty is the objective, and it's supposed to be a deterrent. But aren't the vast majority of the people involved
in the country illegally anyway. So they're not Americans. They're not from America. These people weren't from El Salvador either. But they are here illegally. And you don't have to be an American citizen to have rights. No, of course not. And Biden deported people. Obama deported lots of people. Yes, we're not against deportation. Exactly. It's this way. All right, slightly related to deportation, but trickier question. What about beliefs? Now, the federal government...
has said in the case of this Mahmoud Khalil, he's the Columbia University Hamas-loving activist, not my politics by a long shot. He's for the destruction of Western civilization, in his words, just to give you where he's at. Okay. But in a memo signed by Marco Rubio, the memo does not allege any criminal conduct against him, a legal permanent U.S. resident, but rather that he could be expelled for his beliefs.
See, it's a tough time. You've got to be really sticky with your... You've got to stick to your principles. Like, this guy is, to me, the worst of the worst, but I don't think you can throw people out of this country...
for, or disappear them for, beliefs. Well, you can if... That's sweet. It's more complicated. It's more complicated because... Is it? Well, it is, because he's not a US citizen. He's on a green... Well, hang on. Let me just give my view. The First Amendment applies to everyone. You can educate me when I finish. I will. So, this guy, Mahmoud Khalil, he is in the country on a green card. He came in, I think, in 2022.
By the criteria of that, the Secretary of State has absolute power to remove somebody who's in the country on a green card, even if they haven't committed a crime, if he believes they present a threat to national security, to the security of the United States. This guy, as you said, has been on record handing out pro-Hamas literature, screaming about wanting the destruction of Western civilisation...
leading a group which, as we saw with our own eyes, were terrorising Jewish students at Columbia, who were creating violence and vandalism. People were being taken to hospital. They were stopping students from being educated. Memo does not allege any criminal conduct. It doesn't have to. Well, here's what I would say, and I would just, you know, at this point, quote your late great friend Christopher Hitchens, who famously wrote that when...
every single time that you violate or propose to violate the free speech rights of anyone, you are making a rod for your own back.
OK, you... This is not something... Hate speech, offensive speech, objectionable speech, that's the only speech that needs defending. The speech that everyone agrees with doesn't need any defending at all. Supporting a terrorist organisation. But that's an allegation that he would dispute. He was handing out pro-Hamas literature. No, he was handing out pro-Palestinian literature. No, actually, some of it was pro-Hamas literature. And, by the way, criticising Israel's...
is not a crime. No, it's not. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. No one's saying it is. And by the way, Bill, Gazans are not refugees. They live there. That's their home. That's why people aren't taking them in. Because they're not refugees. And if we make them into refugees, then we're committing an offense on them. So it's important to think of this in the context of, do we want to create a society where anti-Semitism, where the fight against anti-Semitism is used as a justification to permit...
the violation of civil liberties, the destruction of a generation of scientific research at our top universities, and the encroachment of the surveillance state. You know, I don't have to be Jewish to say, no, thank you. I don't want that. I'm OK with that. All right, what if I was a young student at Columbia? They're on a green card, British, come in, happy to be here, do all my paperwork, get to Columbia. And I start leading a group which is a bunch of white supremacists, and we start terrorising black students in the way that they were terrorising Jewish students. Well, hang on.
In that circumstance, would we all be as comfortable with this, or is it the reality which was exposed by the mobs at Columbia, which is that for some reason Jews get treated differently to anybody else when it comes to this kind of thing? Because if that had been, honestly, white supremacists treating black students like that, they would be out of the country in ten minutes. You know, it's so true. In ten minutes. You know...
Defending the right to argue and paranoia are part of the Jewish values that I was raised with, okay? And I think Judaism has, the Jewish values that I was raised with are about tolerance and inclusivity and compassion and a respect for human rights and respect for the environment and respect for the essential oneness of humanity. And none of those things are exhibited by throwing anti-Israel protesters out of the country, okay? And that's not what
I think Judaism stands for. But you don't have to be a Jew to be for human rights. And when people cross the line into violence or harassment, that's a different story. But that's a straw man. We're not talking about that. As always, I think there's a reasonable compromise, and it always exists. I think the right has to admit that you can't disappear people for their beliefs, and the left has to admit that some beliefs are virulent.
That all beliefs are not the same. If you're pro-Hamas, you're for Sharia law. Sharia law is not just different than our way of government. It's worse. You're wanting to put women in burqas. You're telling women they're not... But who gets this aside? What's the harmful speech? Is it Marco Rubio? Who do you trust? I'm on your side of this. This was just my compromise. The left doesn't admit that. That's the problem. Is that these kids are out there and they treat...
a terrorist organization with the most illiberal beliefs in the world as some sort of liberating force, some sort of force for good, Intifada Today, this kind of stuff. And as long as, again, they're over there with that, you will get the pendulum way over there with that. I agree with you. I hate what they say, and I will defend to my death their right to say it. OK, but what about if he had said all this at his green card interview? Would he have got a green card? No. No.
No. If he said, I support a prescribed terror group in the United States, you're not coming in on a green card. All Marco Rubio's doing, it seems to me, is taking it back to that scenario and saying, well, if you'd been honest then... And, by the way, he was dishonest on his green card application about other stuff.
which is another part of the equation, which might in itself disqualify him from staying in the country. But the idea that he would have said, I support Hamas, I support a global intifada, I support the destruction of Western civilisation, now give me a green card to come and live in America, fuck off. All right, after I'm there, time for new rules, everybody, new rules. We actually still have a few new rules. New rules, someone has to tell Jessica Simpson, who just revealed that...
That she drinks a Chinese herb elixir that contains snake sperm. We're not impressed. Have you met Bobby Kennedy? Get back... Get back to me when you drink it straight out of the snake. Now that the Library of Congress has added to its registry of historic recordings, my heart will go on, fly like an eagle, goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and I am woman. Really?
This is the government's job, making sure future generations will be able to hear Elton John sing about hunting the horny back toad. Besides, I don't think these songs are in any danger of disappearing. I heard them all last night while buying my $12 eggs at Ralph's. New Rule, the Nevada man who was arrested after seven emotional support tigers were...
found in his house, must tell me one thing. What kind of problems do you have that six tigers couldn't fix? New Rule. Someone has to tell anti-aging zealot Brian Johnson. Oh, I know him. He's a friend of mine now. I love him. Who's been getting Botox injections in his penis. There's a simpler way to remove dick wrinkles. Just rub it.
Also, if Botox works on the penis like it does on the face, how will we know when it's angry? And a new rule, since this is going to be a turbulent year for stocks, let's make a concerned guise of the stock exchange calendar.
Each month, there's a different stockbroker who looks like he's about to jump out the window, 1929 style. Perfect for waking up every day and saying, well, at least my life isn't as fucked as that guy's. All right, that's our show. I want to thank Josh Rogan, Piers Morgan, and Steve Bannon. Club Random drops every Sunday on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Now go watch Overtime on YouTube. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You were terrific. Thank you.
Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.