So a lot
of people might
not know
that your dad
was actually in the news biz. Yeah.
I mean, your mom was a nurse,
but your dad was in the news business.
And I'm wondering how much you think
that might have had an effect on the fact
that you do very news oriented
content tremendously.
I think it was a great advantage,
first of all.
He was also funny,
and you'll find this a lot
with comedians.
That comedy gene sort of
just aged through a generation.
I grew up in a house
that was interested in the news.
My parents talked about the news.
I was aware of it went away.
I don't think most kids were.
So those are my influences.
Comedy and news.
And then what did I do?
I wound up doing a show
that is a comedy show
that uses the news as fodder
and I wish my father
would have lived to see it,
but he passed away early.
Nobody saw me like do Johnny Carson,
but you didn't see Politically Incorrect.
What's your response
when people tell you that
and you must hear this a lot,
that they get
that you're
one of their primary sources
of information?
Flattered and as it should be.
My response?
I feel like
people are looking for something
that is not slanted.
I mean, I certainly have lost fans
over the years
because I don't say the things
that pleased people all the time.
But that's my ultimate bond
with the audience.
When I lose people,
it's like,
okay, well,
you were never meant to be with me
in the first place.
Yeah, we can't have a relationship.
There are a whole lot of people
who are just conditioned
to only hearing, only wanting
to hear one side of the story. Correct.
They do not want to hear the other side.
I mean, that's it's so ironic.
When I started
on Politically Incorrect
30 years ago, 1993,
everybody said,
you know,
you can't really do a show like this
because you're giving your opinions.
That's not what talk show hosts do.
They don't and can't give their opinions.
You'll alienate half the crowd.
That's not what Johnny Carson did.
That's not what David Letterman did.
That's not what Jay Leno did.
And I said, Well, let's give it a try.
Maybe the
people are a little more sophisticated
than you're giving them credit for,
and they can actually take it that
a guy
who's on TV,
they don't always agree with him,
but they still like him.
Just like in life,
you don't always agree
with your friends on everything.
So it did turn out that it was okay
because here I have 30 years later
still on.
But I get every year
when we are looking for
maybe we want new writers on our show.
I love the writers I have.
But you know what?
I'm running a business here, right?
I'm sorry.
It's it's brutal.
But if I can find somebody better,
that's what I'm doing.
I always serve the show first.
So every year
I read these packets of proposed writers,
and I read them this year,
as I do every year.
And it's just stunning
how uniform their
their point of view are.
And then always it
hasn't always been that exact.
I don't remember,
but I don't think it was ever quite
this bad.
It's the exact same point of view
on every single issue,
and it's very predictable.
I have a relationship
with people
who want to hear
what I think is the truth,
and I'm going to present both sides.
And they may not be fair and balanced.
They may not be equal weight
put to each side
because that's not what the truth is.
The truth isn't always 5050.
Right.
So
I live with that.
But it's, it's it's
it gets more difficult
because we're so tribal now.
So it's interesting about
this is because this comes after,
you know, five, six years of Trump
where it's not like
you pull punches against him at all.
No, nobody was harder on that man,
I don't think.
And honestly, nobody was more
had their hair on fire
about what was going to happen
as far as him not believing in democracy
and not wanting to leave.
I don't think he's leaving
if even if he loses the election in 2020,
he could lose by a landslide in 2020.
And I still think he would say
it's rigged. Fake News Deep State.
If Trump loses the election in November,
he's not going to leave.
You were predicting that in 2018?
Oh, 16, 16 years
before he was even president.
He's not going to leave.
Never going to leave. Right.
And what makes you think that
he's seen this man?
He's everything
wrong with a human
being stuffed into one man.
I mean,
how could he ever do anything different?
He is incapable,
I think, of ever conceding defeat.
And I've never seen him do it.
So why would I think
he would be gracious ever
in that situation or say he ever lost
and he said it?
I mean, even in 2016 when he was running,
they would ask him point blank,
would you?
Well, it's
you know, he's basically saying,
if we win, yes,
then it's a fair election.
If we don't, it was rigged.
He would never actually
just come out and say, yes, of course,
this is America. This is how we do it.
This is the jewel in our crown
in this country
with the peaceful transfer of power.
Nothing like that.
You've been the great predictor
of Donald Trump.
You thought he could win.
You thought he wasn't going to leave
peacefully. He's running.
Oh, yeah.
Do you think
he's going to get the nomination?
And do you think he can beat Joe Biden?
Both.
But both
you think affirmatively are both.
And you think they could happen?
Well, first of all, it could
it might not be Joe Biden.
I think if it's Biden against Trump,
Biden will win.
I do
not guarantee,
but I think that's a really good bet.
It was the first time
and I think it would be the second time.
Even more so even at age 82.
Yes, absolutely.
Well, first of all,
I think
that's a big red herring
that his age is such a factor.
You don't need to be
young or spry to be president.
Yes, it's
very helpful to run for president.
You need to be energetic and
look sharp at the debate.
He could do the job of President
perfectly fine.
And I think he's done
the job perfectly fine.
Do I love everything he has done?
Absolutely not.
But he's president.
That goes with the territory.
But generally he's restored normality.
He's got some things
passed that
nobody thought he could get through this
divided Congress.
I've got it.
Got out of Afghanistan.
Did he stick the landing on that one?
No, but at least he did it.
I mean, Ukraine, I think he's done fine.
And every other country in the world
seems to have gotten
this idea about the elderly, their wives.
That's what you need.
I don't mind at all that he's 82 or 84.
86. Yes.
If he loses his marbles.
But there are plenty of 86 year
old people
who have not lost their marbles
and people used to get that.
We have an important decision to make.
Go to the elders.
They will tell you what
the wise decision is and then you young
people will go and carry it out.
He doesn't have to go
and do every little thing.
I mean, Reagan didn't do anything.
He went to bed at 430.
So that does not bother me at all.
No, it's
going to bother people in the country
because when you run for president,
you get exposed. Your flaws.
And yes,
when you're in your eighties, he's
going to stumble.
He was always a gaffe machine
to begin with. Yeah.
So it could look bad.
But I think as if it's Trump
against Biden, I think Biden will win.
But what if it's not?
What if it's not Biden?
I don't know.
So you talk about the Democrats
being so hemmed in by identity politics.
The counterargument would be
it's always been identity politics.
It's just always been white people.
So people like you and me didn't notice.
And now it's
just an effort at inclusion,
which I'm sure theoretically you support.
Yeah, I support it, in fact.
But I mean, the you know, the
Democrats sometimes can take it
too far or,
you know,
I would
I would categorize liberal
as different than woke.
Woke, which started out as a good thing.
Alert to injustice.
Who could be against that?
But it became sort of an eye roll because
they love diversity, accept of ideas.
And that's not really where we should be.
I mean, they have a trail
of very bad ideas, I would think.
And wokeness.
Like, how do you define wokeness?
Because I hear people
use the term all the time
and it means something different
to everybody.
Well, again,
I think it's this collection of ideas
that are
not building on liberalism,
but very often undoing it.
I mean, five years ago,
Abraham Lincoln
was not a controversial figure
among liberals. We liked him.
Now they
take his
name off
schools and tear down his statues.
Really?
Lincoln isn't good enough for you?
Five, ten years ago, I
bedrock liberalism was.
We are striving to be
a colorblind society
where we don't see race.
Of course we see it,
but it doesn't matter.
That's not what woke is.
Woke is something very different.
It's it's identity politics.
We see it all the time.
It's always the most important thing.
I don't think that's liberalism.
I mean, I could mention
so many issues like that.
I remember doing that
show on HBO,
Comic Relief for the Homeless.
And the idea then again among liberals,
I thought was,
you know,
for the sake of compassion,
can we get these people off the street
so they have a roof over their heads?
And now it's like,
how dare you try to move the homeless?
This is where they live.
It's like, again,
you change the definitions
and then you say, I'm more conservative.
I believe what I've always believed.
You change these things
and then you yell at me for it.