Ep. #690: Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rikki Schlott, John McWhorter
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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Thank you. How are you doing? Thank you, people. Thank you, people. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Please, there's so much news to get to. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Love this crowd. Thank you, please. Thank you so much. As I always say, I know why you're happy today. No, I really don't. Well, I guess, you know, if you don't like what's going on in Washington, it was the first real true big scandal of the Trump administration. The entire national security team was...

You know, they're on a group chat. So, you know, the Houthis in Yemen have been bombing, have been attacking the shipping lane, so maybe they do need a good bombing. But, okay, so... So the entire national security team, I'm talking about the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President, the head of the CIA, Department of Homeland Security, all these people are on this nine-people-on-a-crap group chat on Signal, which is safer than a normal, you know, just... But I have it.

It's not like it's super, you know. And then they loop it. So it's supposed to be nine people are defensive. They loop in a reporter. What are you, taking a fucking picture? No taking pictures during the monologue, asshole. Could you take this guy's phone away and throw him out? No, you don't have to throw you out. Fucking rude as shit. Anyway, so he's on signal, this guy, by the way.

I hate it when even your fans are assholes, you know? Anyway... So they're on this group chat, the defense team, and they loop in a reporter who they saw he was in some guy's contact list, and, oh, he's on now. So today, every teenager in America is saying, and you're worried about our screen time? And...

And also, again, this is our defense team. The national security people, the adults, and they're all using emojis, emojis. Really. You know, flames and biceps and, you know, fist bumps. What were they going to do if the mission failed? Poop emoji. Face palm. Yes, thank God we got rid of Sleepy Joe and the adults are back in charge.

Mr. Vice President, you're going to want to see this. It's a picture of my dick. And, of course, instead of just owning it, which we used to do in the old days, no, now they say that the Trump administration, there was nothing classified. This is so laughable. It was actual attack plans, war plans. And that's what they said, war plans. This is illegal. And their excuse now is, well, they weren't war plans. They were attack plans. LAUGHTER

Bitch, please. I mean, this is... I mean, come on, man. And, you know, nobody has been fired over this. And every D-lister in Hollywood is like, where was this mercy when I was on The Apprentice? So...

And some big MAGA fans are even praising what happened. They're praising the leak. Yeah, they said it proves that the defense, our defense team, are the same in private as they are in public. Yeah, idiots. So, okay, well... Anyway...

To balance this bad news, the Trump administration announced that as of April 2nd, they're putting a 25% tariff on all imported cars, which will raise the price of an imported car from, I don't know, I've read many estimates this week, $3,000, $5,000, up to $10,000. Today I read $6,000. Whatever it is, thousands for a new imported car. Kind of puts the whole eggs are too expensive thing in perspective, doesn't it? But that's what they're doing.

They're fully behind it. Trump says April 2nd will be Liberation Day. Yes, if you like being liberated from your money. Oh, no, he's pissing off even some of his own people. The former head of the Social Security, which, of course, the Doge people are fucking with, and he says because of all the firings there and because of all the budget cuts, the Social Security system is on the brink of total system collapse.

And even Trump people have noticed. I saw a guy yesterday wearing a MAGA hat with a sign that said, we'll own the libs for food. But okay, so... So there's a little shock to the economic system. We are going to make up for it, though. I'll tell you how. I don't know if you know about the Easter egg roll that they do every year. LAUGHTER

I'm kidding. On the White House lawn, you know, there's the Easter. They've done this every year. Well, for the first time now, they announced they're going to have corporate sponsors. I'm not kidding. Well, the differences will be minimal. No, no, no, no, no. Yes, there'll be some paid ads. Yes, there'll be some corporate branding. And now the Easter bunny will be the Geico lizard, okay? Okay.

Not really. But can you imagine how happy Elon would be if he got to fire the Easter Bunny? And what else? Oh, J.D. Vance, Vice President Vance and his wife are visiting Greenland to measure for curtains. And they don't like it. The people in Greenland, they feel they're being pressured. They don't like it. And they have taken to wearing red hats with a message to Trump. And it says, make America go away. Yeah.

Believe me, he's working on it. All right, we've got a great show. We have John McWhorter and Ricky Swatt. But first... First up, we have a podcaster. Um... His new podcast is called This Is Gavin. He's also the Democratic governor of California. Gavin Newsom. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Governor, how are you? How are you, Bill? You look great. God bless you. Always do. I appreciate you. Well, first of all, always appreciate you. This is a California show. We've been in this building since 1996. Love my California. And I appreciate you making the time. You must be very busy. A podcast, you're governor, you're running for president. Where do you get...

But let's talk about what's important. My roof. Your roof. My roof. Is this the solar? Is this more back to the solar? After the fire. It's always about the solar. After the fire, new roof. They suggested, you know, get the stuff that's not okay. Two inspections I needed to have. Why? It's my roof. If it falls on my head, that's my problem. Okay.

That's it? That's it. That's just a statement. No, that's my question. Why do I need two inspections, which I have to pay for? Yeah. You were here last time. We talked about regulations. You said, oh, it's a completely new day. Well, no, wait, wait, wait.

That's a quote from you. To be with you on a new day. You said you were working on it. By the way, last week you had Ezra Klein on, which was incredibly important. He wrote a book called Abundance, which really lays out a very condemning picture of liberal governance in this country and the fact that we are process-focused and not outcome-focused. And your demonstrable example of that is related to what you've tried to do with your damn roof.

for the last 15 years. And so it's our job to eliminate as many of those thickets of regulation as possible. How's that going, though? Well, I'll tell you this. On a serious note, when we have an emergency mindset, it goes extraordinarily well. I'll give you two examples. You had Josh Shapiro on recently talking about the I-95. We have the I-10 here, which we are able to get back on track and cars back on that I-10 within eight days.

After a fire. After the fire, but we were able to do it in eight days. And that otherwise would not have occurred. It would have been months and months and months of process in a traditional environment. The same thing with the recovery as it relates to debris removal. The first phase of debris removal in Los Angeles was done in less than a month. We're a month and a half ahead right now. 1,500 parcels have been cleaned up. I want to get it all done in the next six months. Again, because we have an emergency mindset.

The question is, how do you apply that in between emergencies? How do you do that as it relates to a standard of governance that people should expect and taxpayers should expect? So I couldn't agree more with Ezra. It's an indictment of liberal governance and leadership. And he attacks California rightfully in many categories and respects, the high-speed rail, as it relates to housing production. And we own that. But we also own the response. Forty-two secret reform bills I passed.

There's 20 bills we're working on right now. We're trying to address the issue that is the issue that dominates, and that's localism. And the issue you describe is local inspectors that the state can't control, but we have to... Yeah, I wrote down that list of the people involved. Like, you mentioned the high-speed rail. I'm sure you're tired of talking about the high-speed rail. But it was passed in...

In 2019, you said, let's be real, the current project as planned would cost too much, respectfully take too long. Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego. Well, there's a path. It's the highway. Let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were. However, we do have the capacity to complete a high-speed rail link from Merced to Bakersfield. Yeah. I know you're the governor of everyone in the state, and those are...

Can you name three people who ever wanted to go from Bruce Smith's head to Bakersfield? I mean, I feel like... I'm just saying, it's like... Let me challenge the premise, because I think in many respects, this goes to, I think, the state of the Democratic Party. And I mean this with respect.

The Central Valley in California is one of the fastest growing parts of the state. It's predominantly rural, yes. It's predominantly Republican, yes. But it's an incredibly important part of the state. And I think we are at our own peril. We talk down to people in the Central Valley. And I think a lot of people extend that as part of the problem with the Democratic brand. We talk down to people. We talk past people. I think it's an incredibly important part of the state, not just because I represent the state. By the way, that represented that part of the state, probably the largest share of my recall vote.

So I'm not saying that in the context of a political frame, but I am saying it in the context of trying to meet people where they are and respect people. All of us want to be protected. We want to be respected. We want to be connected. And I think they have a right to have this kind of investment as much as the culture. I really wasn't attacking those people, but good to know. No, no, no. That's why I think, it's why you'd be a good candidate. You played this game well. No, I mean it.

In the best way. But here's what, but my point was that we can't even build that. And I wrote that, this is from my old book, regulators, administrators, inspectors, contract reviewers, these are all the people involved, project managers, fee assessors, special commissioners, zoning officers, consultants, contractors, lawyers, lobbyists, sometimes you

unions also. Can't you take a chainsaw? Can't we doge the shit out of these people? Yes, I mean, the lawyers and the lobbyists, those are the two most potent forces in that respect. By the way, the biggest delay on the high-speed rail has been taking 2,270 properties under eminent domain and ultimately getting the environmental work cleared. And that was courts, litigation, and lobbyists. By the way, we're doing railhead now. This thing's

fully environmentally cleared. We've underground 1,000 utilities. We're finally on the other side of this as it relates to that project. But as it relates to getting housing done and dealing with the supply-demand imbalance to deal with the affordability crisis, that explains more things in more ways in more days about California's challenges.

100%, we have to have that same mindset, and we're moving in that direction very aggressively. We own it. We have a responsibility to do something about it. But remember, it's interesting. Those rules were established in the 1970s by Republicans. The California... The CEQA...

challenges that we have in this state. That was Ronald Reagan bill. 1970, NEPA, that was Nixon. Clean Air Act, Nixon. Dangerous Species Act, interestingly, Nixon. But it's been weaponized. This lawfare has been weaponized. And Democrats, we need to call that out. But it's also abused, again, on the other side of the political aisle as well. OK, so John Fetterman was in the news today. He said, if we talk about the Democratic Party, he said, if we don't get our shit together, we're going to be a permanent minority. I agree.

And I see you're doing something about it. And I applaud it. I think it's great. You've got this podcast. You're talking to people. You know, it's amazing to me that even that is controversial to some people. They call it platforming. If you talk to someone you don't agree with. Yeah. I feel like this country is divided into owners and healers, people who think you can own the other side. Yeah.

Gavin Newsom owned DeSantis. DeSantis destroyed Gavin Newsom. Or people who want to talk and heal. And I feel like the next president is going to be, at least if it comes from this party, the Democratic Party, someone who wants to talk and heal. And I feel like you're doing that.

It's really been interesting, the reaction to the podcast. I mean, we had some controversial figures on, I'll acknowledge that, and Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, and some others. But you're right. I mean, this idea that we can't even have a conversation with the other side? You have to. They won. Thank you.

And that's it. Bottom line. And by the way, or the notion we just have to continue to talk to ourselves or we're in the same damn echo chamber. These guys are crushing us. The Democratic brand is toxic right now. We had a high watermark two weeks ago, and that was a CNN poll at 29% favorability. It's dropped in the NBC poll down to 27%.

It's one thing to make noise, but you also have to make sense. And I think with this podcast and having the opportunity to dialogue with people I disagree with, it's an opportunity to try to find common ground and not take cheap shots. I'm not looking to put a spoke in the wheel of their, or at least a crowbar in the spokes of their wheel to trip them up to your point. And I think it's important. Democrats, we tend to be a little more judgmental than we should be. This notion of cancel culture, you've been living it. You've been on the receiving end of it for years and years and years. That's real. And Democrats need to own up to that.

They've got to mature about this. So what do you say to people who say, well, this sounds all very good, but Governor, you were the poster boy for a lot of this stuff. I see today the Trump administration is, they talked about, I don't know if this is true, but they talked about the fact that California had a rule that schools cannot be required to notify parents if their kids in school have changed their gender, their pronouns.

That's the kind of thing, even though it doesn't affect a lot of people, that makes a lot of people go, well, you know what? That's the party without common sense. Now, if that's your state, how are you? I just disagree with that. I mean, the law was you would be fired. A teacher would be fired if a teacher did not report or snitch on a kid talking about their gender identity.

I just think that was wrong. I think teachers should teach. I don't think they should be required to turn in kids. And by the way, turn in? We're talking about their parents. How can you snitch? The idea of a snitch and a parent, to me, doesn't compare. Well, I just, I don't, but what is the job of a teacher? It's to teach. If Johnny's talking about some identity issue or some issue about liking someone of the same sex, is it the teacher's job to then report that? By the way, in this law, the teacher can still do that, but they can't be fired if that's

what it can't be fired if that's not what they do. And that's something I think is, I just think that was fair. And I don't think that's inappropriate. I've seen a lot of people lately talking about this 80-20 issue.

And I think you are on the other side of this now, the side with the 80. 80 being 80% of the people in this country. Again, this is the issue of should biologically born men be able to compete in women's sports? That's tough. And, you know, you... I saw the polling here in California. They think you're a traitor for saying this. Yeah. You know, when those kind of people call you a traitor, there's a word for that, electable. If the Democrats...

And 80% of the people are with you on this now. If the Democrats can't get with 80, how are they going to do something when it's a 51-49? No, look, I get it. And the other side weaponizes these issues. They dehumanize, they attack, they demean, and they've weaponized this issue extraordinarily well. That said, on the fundamental question, is it fair? And I can give you example after example. Just in my home state, there was someone that won a triple jump

by eight feet. Right. All right? It's just, but it's, you know, serious. And, you know, we had two people in the state championship. This broke my heart. Two years ago, I'll never forget it, 18 months ago, we had two extraordinary athletes that got into the state finals, trans athletes.

Got in the state finals, the backlash was so bad, they didn't even compete. And the other two people that were kicked out weren't able to compete. It was fundamentally unfair. We haven't been able to figure that out. So I express that as a fierce champion of LGBTQ rights. Yes. With a record that I don't have with anyone. You have the cred. And so that's the challenge we have. You want to cancel someone who's been with you on almost, you know, every critical issue, every critical junker for decades, or cancel you because you have the audacity to go visit with Trump

next week. I mean, you have more credibility to visit him than any goddamn person. I think so. I know. You've been at this for 20 years. And I... Yeah. And, uh...

By the way, I give him a lot of credit for inviting me. Yeah, by the way, learn something from that, Democrats. I'm serious about this. It's not zero-sum. We're not winning right now. He won by 2.3 million votes. We lost the House and the Senate. And we're in a panic. I get it. For good reason. This guy's not screwing around. Right. But we need to own our mistakes. We need to own what's wrong with our party. All right. So given that last question...

Given that we are in this dire situation, I feel like we don't have time anymore for the old bullshit. You know, the old, are you running for president? Well, you know, there's an exploratory committee and I'm looking at it. I'm happy with my job as governor. I mean, your future is not in California. Your future is in Iowa. Let's dispense with the bullshit. We need someone who's going to be the champion. Are you going to do it or not? Just come on. Tell us.

We don't have time for the bullshit. By the way, I deeply respect that I can't stand the bullshit as well. And I mean that. But this is not my purpose or passion. It's not my meaning. It's not everything. The cynicism that's out there, that every move he's making is some move to some longer-term strategy or short-term strategy. No, Justin, you're a guy who could do it, who could get it done, who could win. I really...

deeply respect that. I respect the question, but I don't have any grand plans as it respects to that. I'm trying to do the best I can. I'm also trying to be accountable. By the way, you want things to change, you've got to change. And that's what the podcast is about. That's my recognition of where we're weak. Can I do it? You've got to call balls and strikes. Can I be on your podcast? You want to come on the podcast? Can I?

Can I invite myself? After the Trump visit, I want you on the podcast. All right. Thank you very much. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. Thank you. I appreciate it very much. All right. Let's meet our panel. Hey. Hey, you guys. All right. He is a linguist and opinion writer at the New York Times. His newest book is called Pronoun Trouble, The Story of Us in Seven Little Words. John McWhorter. All right. Thank you.

And she's a New York Post columnist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, which is out in paperback April 29th. Ricky Schlatt, back with us. Ricky, good to see you. Okay, so, well, group chats are in the news. And it looks like Pete Hegsev picked the wrong week to quit drinking.

So we can go past the fact that this is a scandal. It's not the Bay of Pigs, but I just thought it was interesting that I looked up what happened after the Bay of Pigs, which is John F. Kennedy's big fiasco when he first got into office. Around the same time, just a couple of months in, he said, I am the responsible officer of this government.

He said, victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. But I feel like it's so quaint, that era, when people just took responsibility, because that certainly hasn't been their motive up around here after it's just to say, no, you're the asshole. So what are your thoughts on this? Those are mine. Thank you.

I just think that, you know, what we see in a case like this, with those emojis on the page, it's like the written equivalent of Lucky Charms. And that's supposed to be some kind of... And this is our government, and, you know, it reminds... It's like 12-year-olds doing Shakespeare. These are people who are...

Completely. Completely underwater. And yet there's no... no sense of responsibility whatsoever. There's this general mantra, and we like to talk about how Roy Cohn told this to Donald Trump, the idea is that you never apologize. As if that's some kind of statesmanship. You know, imagine translating that into Latin. And yet the idea...

I'm not going to try here. But the idea is that you never apologize, and so you just say, no, that didn't happen. No, we were not giving away war secrets, and that, therefore, is the truth. This is a failure of democracy. Amen to that. Yeah, I...

I think regardless of your politics, I mean, it's hard to look at the same people who were very upset about Hillary's email servers and the security of that, who now have no problem with a signal group chat. And it's really condescending to the American people who can see this entire transcript. It is a screw-up. I don't care if it's classified or sensitive or an attack plan or a war plan. It is plain and clear that accountability and just fessing up and saying this won't happen again is the very least that the administration owes their voters. Thank you.

The journalist who got on the call, I mean, he had to be in somebody's contact list, right? That's how it happened. We have no explanation for this whatsoever. And, you know, his initials are JG. And at some point it said, JG has left the chat. And nobody reacted. Nobody reacted. Who was that? I mean, this is what they're talking specifically about bombing another country.

And, of course, this guy is an editor at The Atlantic, and he's a national security reporter. His whole job is to get a scoop on a thing like this. And he even said, I shouldn't be seeing this. I'm getting off this call now.

And yet we have no explanation even now as to why he's there, and they don't seem to have any sense that they might want to give one. And instead, they keep talking about what a scummy journalist this august figure with 40 years of experience is. Jeff Goldberg is not a scummy journalist. And yet all we've gotten is this kind of sandbox talk from these people. They are a clown car. They are seriously...

Degenerate human beings, and it's rather frightening to watch how this is going to play out. And I also have to say, we're pretty lucky that that is the JG that got into the group chat, and not somebody who's indiscreet and just decided to tweet, like, ha-ha, look at this crazy group chat that I'm in, two hours before an American airplane took off in a hostile foreign country to execute this. I mean, it could have jeopardized real American servicemen's lives. It could have killed people. Okay.

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Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. All right. So, John, you work at Columbia University. I do. Speaking of clown cars. And...

I should say that I have been on a blissful sabbatical for the entire year. Lucky you, sir. I only know so much because... All right. Well, I mean, starting last week, Trump is going to war now on elite universities. Now, I cannot be a hypocrite. I went through my book that came out last year. It'll be out in paperback very soon. All right. And...

I can't be a hypocrite. I wrote down some of the things that I've said over the past that were gathered in the book. Don't go to an elite college. It makes you stupid. Elite universities are the mouth of the river from which men are all radical, left, illiberal, yes, illiberal nonsense flows. They're four-year daycare centers.

For the cry bullies of the privileged to complain about privilege. College today is not the college you remember. It's a day spa and a North Korean re-education camp put together. They're asshole factories. If ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market. Okay, so... So, that's where I am. I can't... But...

So I get the inclination, but as with most things now with this new administration, the way they do it, you can't do it by taking people off the street just because they wrote an op-ed pro-Palestinian. I'm not pro-Palestinian the way they see it either, or these people who are just disappeared because they have a tattoo. I'm so glad I don't have tattoos. Bill, I should say that.

The kind of student you're talking about, in my experience, is a minority of the students. I don't see the whole campus as this, but there is a problem. I mean, frankly, Columbia has tried, for example, this year to eradicate or at least dampen anti-Semitism. I mean, Manoush Shafiq did get 100 students arrested. You now cannot get onto the campus without a card, which is in order to...

protect, especially Jewish students, from having to listen to anti-Semitic protests all day long. The three administrators who were nakedly anti-Semitic in their texts were justifiably fired. But the thing is, I don't think this is really about anti-Semitism from the Trump administration. I think they care about as much about anti-Semitism as a kitchen cabinet or a spoon. What? They are

really upset about. It's just wokeness in general. And universities do have a problem with wokeness. That is a real problem. Yes. They have a problem with... By the way, Trump's also going after this Smithsonian this week. And the order is called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. Well, there's some truth to that. The whole idea that they seem to have on campus is that America is the bad guy. Now,

Now, America has done some bad things, as has every country, but they don't seem to have any historical perspective. They seem to be historically ignorant, and they seem to not understand or appreciate or defend liberalism, which is the great irony. The things that make this country great are liberal principles, which, I mean, intifada is the global solution. That's not liberalism.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that is now coming back to bite them because they are now being attacked with very illiberal means and they've completely abdicated the responsibility of teaching the American public, teaching the next generation liberal values that are required to protect academia and to keep it so... the sanctity of it. But I completely agree with you. I'm disgusted with the state of academia, but I absolutely do not want to live in a world where the president of the United States is also the president of Columbia University. It's a massive extension of power. Right.

OK, well, one thing I want to get in is that this is one of those things where you have to be able to see grey rather than just black and white. And the truth is that many people... All of this may sound kind of abstract sometimes, but many people would be surprised to go to a meeting of, say, anthropologists or historians or...

or just about any subject that they think of as humanities, with the ivy on the buildings and, you know, the college campus and the movies, and see what passes for discussion in those subjects. And many of those places, over about the past 15 years in particular, there's this general idea that battling power is supposed to be the North Star, as they put it,

at NPR, the North Star of all inquiry. So you're not learning about the subject, you're taking that subject and battling power. And if you're not doing that, you're either sinister or you're not quite sexy enough to matter. And that's a problem because battling power alone should be one of about 50 things that you study. And if you only study that...

It's kind of like kids who want to have candy for dinner. You know, for one thing, that's not good for you. And also, they need to broaden their horizons. All of these people who are infusing academia with wokeness want to have candy for dinner. That's a huge problem in academia right now. Okay. Well...

Just wanted to get that in. I'm glad you did. All right, so I have to cover this. J.D. Vance and his wife went to Greenland. I think they're there right now. I think the trip happened today. The president of Denmark, which owns Greenland, was not happy about it. He said, this is unacceptable pressure. And the people in Greenland have all these signs up that they, you know, obviously are telling us not to go. We are not for sale. You know, this kind of stuff that's going on. 99.7% say no.

Yankee, go home. So they don't want us there. But these are not all the signs they had. Would you like to see some of the... Oh, I knew you would. You always come through. Here are some of the other signs that they were greeted with. Under this mitten is a middle finger. Golf carts and rascal scooters don't work on ice, fatties. How about getting Florida right before expanding? Oh!

Hey, if Iceland has Bjork, what do you think the music here sounds like? If you leave us alone, we'll take Meghan Markle. We're Team Drake? I don't even understand. I don't even get what that... We already know when you're invading because you included us in a group chat. You know it's not really green here, right?

And, of course, Chuck Off.

Okay, so, John, let's talk about your book. I love all your books. I love this one, especially because it has everything I love in a book. Timely, witty, and tiny. The third part was important. It's readable. It's a stocking stuffer. Wait, it's not Christmas. It's a summer stuffer. Everything's too long, and nobody needs that much time to say anything, and you say it so well and so succinctly, and the whole point of it is that, you know, we spent the last...

I don't know, five, ten years, well, five, certainly, obsessing about pronouns. So it's about time somebody wrote this book. And, you know, the state of your pronouns and stating them when you were going for a job or anything became de rigueur.

And I know a lot of people, you know, think that that was too far. That's one of the BS things of the woke, as we call it. And I want to get to that word in a minute. But first, let's just talk about this, this pronouns. And you make some amazing points that I didn't realize you don't think about it. How pronouns, like any part of language, a living, breathing thing. It's changes. You can't change it when they change. It's like crowdsourcing. Oh.

We used to say thee and thou, and we don't do it anymore. And now we say, like you point out, we say y'all, because there's no really plural you. So we kind of invented that word. Yeah, y'all come with us. So...

What's my question? I don't know. Pronouns. What's up with pronouns, John? They're a dandy little set of words. They really are. A little purple book about them. And they are always changing, and you can't fix it. And any time they change, people get angry. You get the kind of Uncle Vernon spittle, and then the pronoun has changed. I'm just not going to do it. And so...

It used to be that singular was thou. Thou, Ricky. But you, Bill and Ricky. That was the way the language was. And then people started using you in the singular. There were people writing whole pamphlets. Don't you know the difference? Don't you understand grammar? And now, here we are.

And now there's the they thing. And so the idea is that we're questioning our notion, not of biological sex, but of gender identity. There are questions about it. Many people see it differently than they did 50 years ago. So do you need a pronoun for it, and what's it going to be? Frankly, it would be nice if you could make one up. Z is fashionable. Heesh was a big deal for about 10 minutes in the 1970s. You get it? He, he and she. I'm going to make one up now. Gabingo. I like that word. Yeah.

Those will never... Those will never work. You can't do it because pronouns are not really words. They're like screws. They're nails. They're little traffic cops. We use them too much to change them. So you have to use what you've got. Unfortunately, that's they. And so I think we all have a nice habit to learn to use. And it's fun to learn new things. And so that's they and them. Yeah, but that one... But using they...

I'm all fine for this philosophically, but when we started using they for the singular, it's just, come on, man. We're already using it for something else. I would be reading an article in the paper, and I'm like, they? And I go back three paragraphs. I guess they were talking about two people. Oh, that's right. It's just...

You gotta come up with your own shit, you know? I mean... Yeah, you know, that is real. You know, I have had that experience of, do they mean they, they, or they, they? So I actually, not to toot... Somebody... Some people say toot your own trumpet. I always thought it was blow your own horn. No, toot your own horn. Toot your own horn. Yes. I'm not gonna toot my own horn, except I am, which is yesterday, I did a New York Times op-ed where I made a suggestion that I think of as rather valuable.

That they is difficult in print. So why don't we use a capital T with the they when it refers to a single person, somebody. Isn't that? Yeah. See? Because then it makes it easier to read. If by any chance this catches on, you heard it here first, because I think it's important. We capitalize I. Yeah. I got this from your book.

And we don't do that with any other, we don't capitalize me, you, they, but I. And we're used to it. Yes, because it helps. Yeah, and it helped back when it was all handwriting and the I looked like an M or an N. Well, now we have a related kind of problem. And so if the they is going to settle in, and I'm pretty sure it is, I think that we should just have this new, as we call it, orthographical convention, because that'll make reading much easier. Let's make reading easier.

So you mentioned the word woke. I want to bring this into this because I've had this discussion with a lot of people who don't like the fact that the word, the meaning of the word woke has changed. And I just say to them, it's crowdsourcing. You cannot control it. I get it. It triggers you because you think of the original meaning of woke, which is alert to injustice, which we're all for. But then I'm sorry, it became something else. It became...

The crowd decided that it was the word we're using for too far leftist crazy bullshit. It means eye roll. It means something stupid, in my view. And I just would love to know what you think about that.

It was inevitable that that was going to happen because a certain small but influential crowd of people were really obnoxious in 2020 and 2021. And so woke came to have that meaning. It used to have this warm meaning that you understood the leftist orthodoxy in a neutral way, but then it became a leftist who is prosecutorial and likes to throw people out of windows. Now we have right woke, where woke just means likes to prosecute and throw people out of windows. Go about...

15 years from now, and I'll bet woke is just gonna mean somebody who jumps all over you. It's not gonna be about left or right. Don't talk to Aunt Hattie about Uncle Joe because they're broken up now and she's gonna go all woke on you. I'm just guessing. What about capitalizing black? I didn't care at first. I felt capital enough.

And I don't like changing, and you can't capitalize white because that's associated with white supremacists. I just couldn't be bothered, so I watched everybody else do it. But frankly, the New York Times likes you to do it, and so you get in the habit. And I must admit, I don't want to admit this. I don't like change. But about six months ago, I realized in other stuff that I write, I'm capitalizing black, which means that it can be easy even for fussy people like me to change their habits. Capital T, they.

You know, so I'm fixated on that. Okay. Alicia Ortiz is suing Connecticut High School because she went there and she can't read or write. She graduated with honors. Now, she does have dyslexia.

But it's making a lot of people ask, now that we are talking about getting rid of the Department of Education, is there any validity to that since the kids in high school are graduating without being able to read or write? And I think it's great that she's suing. I mean, every kid should do it. I think we certainly need reform. I mean, only 31% of eighth graders right now can read at proficient levels. That is...

and that's unacceptable for a country like America. But another part of this story that I found really surprising was that, and this is not to criticize this girl, but she's now a freshman in college, and when I heard that, I thought, how do you pass the SAT if you can't read or write? Or how do you score adequately?

And her college, UConn, is still in the test optional phase from COVID. They don't require test scores anymore. And this is part of this larger move away from meritocracy in the name of equity that I think is really destroying our institutions of higher learning. Even at Harvard this year, they had to start a remedial math course because so many of their students during that test optional phase did not even have...

basic algebra and geometry skills down. Well, I just saw a video of kids on spring break, and they do this every year. It's Jay Leno's old jaywalking bit where they just walk up to people and ask them really basic questions. We showed it one year, the new version, but it's the same bit. And, you know, I mean, questions that are just preposterously easy for at least our brilliant audience would understand. But really, it's true. I mean, these people know things. They wouldn't be watching this show if they didn't, but...

But I'm talking about questions like, you know, what's the biggest city in the world? Europe. And these are not joke answers. The new one, they asked them, who won the Civil War? The Americans. Technically, that's right. In a way, poetically it is. I don't think they knew it the way you were. Who's the first person to walk on the sun?

Who did they think it was? Lance Armstrong. Of course. Of course.

And, you know, I've had people, parents say, I've heard you talk about this stuff, Bill. And, you know, yeah, it's, you know, you can cherry, I don't think it's cherry picking. I guess there are school districts where they still teach kids something. But I think mostly when parents talk about this, everybody thinks their own kid is a genius. I'd like to talk to your kid. I bet you they're not. I bet you they don't know a lot either. And it's not their fault.

And that's why I love this lawsuit. This girl is saying, you let me out. You signed my diploma with honors, and I can't even read or write. I mean, this country is just... It's partly the schools of education. It's one of those things where if you went to the typical education conference, you might be very surprised at how little people are taught how to educate. Instead, so often it's all tied up in how to teach students to be good leftist activists.

or how to teach students to be nice, or there's a code for all of this empathy. And so it's all about social justice, and the people mean well, but what they've forgotten, and this really goes back to the 70s, but it's extreme now, like so many things, is that schools of education too often don't teach anybody how to teach students things. So that includes how to read.

And until we fix that, we're going to continue to have cases like this. And it really is, it's an American tragedy and nothing really ever seems to make a dent in it. Nowadays, we're beginning to know about phonics. Big surprise, to teach people how to read, unless they live in book-lined homes, you have to teach them how to sound out the words. Boy, rocket science there. That's something. But...

We're going to keep getting that girl until education schools teach something called education. All right. Well, I can read a prompter, and it says, time for new rules, everybody. New rules. Now that we know a journalist was mistakenly added to a group chat with national security officials, we no longer have to guess how Pete Hegstuff got caught cheating on his wives. Hey, sexy, I can be at the Lucky Stuff Motel in an hour. Pete, this is your wife. Oh.

New Rule, since 23andMe just declared bankruptcy and Dollar Tree just sold Family Dollar at a loss of $7 billion, they have to form a new company, Family Tree. Family Tree, where you can find out that your ancestors came here in 1910 and you can buy toothpaste made in the same year. New Rule, when I push the elevator close door button, the door has to close immediately. LAUGHTER

Not in five seconds, not in eight seconds. There's a guy coming down the hall with three suitcases and a crying baby. Stop fucking with me and do your job. That's right. New Rule, the Florida cop who spent two weeks waiting for a thief who swallowed a pair of diamond earrings to pass them must please tell me that after sealing the evidence bag, he looked at his partner and said, I'm getting too old for this shit. LAUGHTER

Uh, Noura, let's stop making it a news story every time we arrest someone hot. Here's this week's entry into our National Hot Criminal Yearbook. University of Georgia student Lily Stewart. This is actually her second arrest this year, which is so embarrassing. You look like this and you can't get out of a ticket in the South? LAUGHTER

And finally, New Rule, to those on the right who keep asking me, Bill, you're so good at roasting the woke nonsense peddlers, why don't you go all the way and join us? Let me give you the short answer. Because I don't want to live in North Korea. Kim Jong-un has state stenographers who follow him everywhere and scribble his genius ideas into their notebooks and applaud. Well, Republicans, that's you now! Republicans...

Republican Congressman Addison McDowell wants to name Dulles Airport after Trump. It'll be like other airports, except the International Terminal only has departures. There's also a bill in Congress to add Trump to Mount Rushmore, because like Washington, he's a patriot. Like Teddy Roosevelt, he's a renegade. And like Abraham Lincoln, he's not really helping the theater scene in Washington, D.C. LAUGHTER

Yeah, the Kennedy Center is not something I really care a lot about, but I do care that an American president doesn't see anything wrong with him personally taking it over or that his communications director, Stephen Chung, said it was justified because Trump, quote, is a virtuoso and his musical choices represent a brilliant palette of vibrant colors when others often paint in pale pastels. LAUGHTER

Jesus, Stephen, don't get any in your hair. Republicans dance like Trump now. They... They name weapons systems after him. They've even dressed like him with the trademark suit and tie. Available exclusively at Banana Republic. Yeah, all these super macho guys eating the ass of another man.

Some even talk like him now, with the crazy, over-the-top exaggerations. About our new tariff policy, Commerce Secretary Ludnick said, these policies are the most important thing America has ever had. Yeah, take that emancipation proclamation in Louisiana, Percy. And...

And these bills they've introduced to make Trump's birthday a holiday and put him on currency in Mount Rushmore. This is not what we do here, guys. He's still in office, for God's sake. Can we see how it turns out before we put him on a stamp? If I admit that there is a level of Trump derangement syndrome on the left, will you admit that this shit is also deranged? All the people...

All the people on the right who say they certainly don't agree with me on everything, but they respect the way I keep it real about the left and like me because I'm honest. Well, that's a two-way street. Are you being honest? At Trump's speech this month to a joint session of Congress, he claimed the government had spent $8 million making mice transgender.

It did not. The $8 million was for transgenic mice, mice that were being genetically modified to study how hormone treatments affect human health. We were splicing their genes, not making them compete in women's sports. We weren't spending $8 million to give mice big balls or fake tits. Sorry, Stuart Little. But wait, here's the thing.

Here's the important thing about this. The fact that President Trump got this wrong isn't what bothers me. Transgender mice is crazy, but it's not crazier than a thousand other things that our government has funded over the years, like developing origami condoms or studying why chimps fling their feces, okay? Wow.

No, what's worrisome about it is that nobody around the president would dare tell him that transgenic is not transgender. It makes you think that if Trump came down one day and his fly was open, Republicans wouldn't tell him. They'd just start showing up with their fly open. LAUGHTER

At that same speech, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, pissed off Steve Bannon because apparently the look on her face was not one of sufficient enrapturement. Bannon showed the video of her to his viewers and said, that's not a look of admiration. Yeah, nothing too North Korean about that. So...

So I know, my Republican friends, when you hear cult, you roll your eyes. But let me add one thing to it that you might not have heard. You know a cult is really a cult when the leader asks you to turn on friends and family because they're the only ones who are a threat to deprogram you. It's why Tom Cruise doesn't talk to his own kid. Which brings me to America, suddenly saying to our closest friend in the world, you know what? Fuck Canada for no particular reason. LAUGHTER

I don't know for sure where Jesse Waters of Fox News stood on invading Canada 12 weeks ago, but I'm guessing it wasn't on his mind at all. But now his message for Canada is, the fact that they don't want us to take them over makes me want to invade. But Canada isn't threatening us. For God's sakes, their flag is a leaf. LAUGHTER

Even Joe Rogan, a Trump voter, said, why are we upset at Canada? This is stupid. Okay, MAGA people, that's called thinking for yourself. At the end of Trump's first term, there were still some people who would occasionally correct him on little details, like, you lost that last election. LAUGHTER

But now we have Lauren Boebert saying we must rally behind President Trump to secure his third term. Something Steve Bannon is advocating for as well. And you know, you just know that soon the entire Republican Party will be on this page.

Okay, there's no fuzz on this. It's as clear as one, two, three. Presidents get two terms, not more, no matter how wonderful you think they are. It's written in black and white in the Constitution. Guys, you know this is wrong. You know in your heart this is the moment when Rome stops being a republic. So come on.

Be like those mice and grow a pair of balls. All right, that's our show. We're off next week and back on April 11th. I want to thank John McWhorter, Ricky Flatt, and Governor Gavin Newsom. Club Random drops every Sunday on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And now watch us on Overtime on YouTube. Thank you very much, everybody.

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.

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