No one across the political
spectrum is safe.
From the acid wit of Bill
Maher, the comedian
and host of Real Time on HBO.
On recent episodes of his show,
he has brought his sharp analysis
to big issues in the news,
such as the presidential election
and college campus protests.
I wanted to talk to him
about all that and more.
He has a new book
called
What This Comedian Said Will Shock You.
And I should note
that HBO and CNN
share the same parent company,
Warner Brothers Discovery.
Bill Law, a pleasure to have you on.
Always great to see you.
So in the middle of your book, you write,
some people think I've changed.
I assure you I have not.
I'm still the same unmarried, childless,
pot smoking libertine I always was.
I have many flaws.
But you can't accuse me of maturing.
That sounds like a
really funny, good book.
So I want to put to you
because I know you like
listening to disagreements.
People who say to me,
and there are many who say,
I love Bill Maher,
but he he has matured too much.
He's become cranky,
he's become crotchety.
He's become one of those old guys
who says, kids are crazy.
It was better in my day.
What do you say to them? They're wrong.
I mean,
they're wrong and the kids are crazy.
It's interesting.
They have this idea,
the younger generation, maybe
every generation does
that just because something is new
makes it better.
And that's not true.
New is not synonymous with better.
But you're sounding like an old fashioned
but conservative. Okay.
I heard a
couple of people say
or maybe they wrote it online that,
well, I'm
a hypocrite
because you were for the demonstrators
in 1968 or whatever
it was
when they were demonstrating
against the Vietnam War.
Yeah, that was very different.
First of all, the students
weren't against their own.
These students were threatening
other students.
That didn't happen in the Vietnam War.
And
being against the Vietnam War was
made sense.
It was a war
that we probably should not have been in.
But but listen,
this is demonstrating
and protesting for a terrorist group.
I mean, Hamas is well, to be fair,
a lot of students are doing that.
There are a lot of outside
you know,
people have mixed together
what students are doing,
what outside protesters are doing.
But let me ask you a broader question,
which is a lot of people will say, look,
this is how you get change.
You know, it's noisy.
Some people do say the wrong thing.
Some people go too far.
But the whole tradition
of this kind of expansion
of rights, it's messy. It's chaotic.
You know?
Yeah, we're
we're this
probably a bunch of excess, as
there were probably was in the sixties.
There was the Black Panthers
and the Weathermen and things like that.
But they
they think of you as somebody who was
you know, you were okay with all that.
But you've you've turned.
I have in turn.
Yes.
People have said to me,
you make fun of the left
more than you used to
and guilty
I have, because the left has changed now.
The right has changed also.
And even worse.
I mean, the right doesn't
believe in democracy anymore.
I mean, they've thrown their lot in
with this sociopath named Donald Trump
who only thinks elections count
when we win. Okay, well, that's worse.
But it's not like the left
hasn't changed also.
So I'm going to call it out
wherever I see it.
I mean, there are
things that have to do with,
you know, gender and race and free speech
and just ideas about,
you know,
you can be healthy at any weight.
And gender is always a social construct.
And maybe we should give communism
another try
and maybe we should get rid of capitalism
and the Border Patrol and let's tear down
statues of Lincoln and
get rid of the police.
But just, you know, no, it's
not that I've gotten old.
It's that your ideas are stupid.
Okay.
Concepts is still common sense,
yet common sense is common sense.
And I'm going to call it out
wherever it is on the spectrum.
Let me ask you
about a related thing that you've
that you've written
about and talked about,
which I find very interesting.
You think that that men in particular
have lost their young men
have lost the ability
to communicate to date,
to know how to cope women?
Yes.
I think this is
going to be a very big problem.
I think young men
thought it was a great thing
when Tinder came along.
Oh, my gosh.
Look,
I don't even have to talk to a girl.
It's all right here on my phone.
I can just scroll through
like it's a menu,
like I'm ordering from GrubHub.
But the truth is that
Tinder is mostly men.
You know,
it's like two thirds of men
who are on the site.
So that's not good odds if you're a man.
And then
most women on it say
they will swipe left
on anyone who's not six feet tall,
which would leave us out.
So what is the upshot of this
going to be?
My guess would be a lot of horny,
frustrated, angry
Trump voters is,
I'm guessing,
where these guys are going to go.
You know,
they already have
this group called Incels.
Have you heard of that?
Incel stands for Involuntarily celibate,
and they're very angry and very vocal.
And I don't blame them.
I remember when I was an incel,
but you know,
we didn't have a word for it.
Women have not changed that much.
I know if you look in the media,
it looks like
we're all
fluid and gay and trans
and on the spectrum and non-binary,
but I don't know,
you know, The Bachelor is still on.
I just don't
think women have changed that much
and they're communicative creatures.
You have to talk to them.
And I think men are losing that ability.
I think they,
you know,
they just think they can
send a text of an eggplant
emoji and write what's up
and they're going to be home free.
No, you have to court.
Yes, you have to do some courting.
Women have not changed in that regard.
lot about how the left has gone crazy.
But to be fair to you,
you've always also pointed out
the right has gone
even crazier, embracing Trump.
I want to ask you why
you think it happened.
Because, you know,
this was the party of Ronald Reagan,
free markets, free
trade, loved immigration,
very optimistic.
What do you think made it?
You know, it's now dour, pessimistic.
America is doomed.
It's American carnage.
Well,
I think the basis of it is
we started to hate each other.
I mean, you mentioned Ronald Reagan
famously.
He used to have a drink
at the end of the day,
often with Tip O'Neill,
who was the leader in the House
and the Democrat,
but they were just two
Irish pals
who could get together
and have a Scotch at the end of the day.
And they knew
they weren't going
to get along on many issues,
but they didn't hate each other.
They could drink together.
That is inconceivable today.
Can you imagine Joe Biden
having a drink with Mike Johnson?
It just would never happen.
When you hate people,
you don't listen to them.
So it doesn't matter how
reasonable they might be.
We have reached this
place where each side thinks
the other side is an existential threat.
You hear that term
from both sides all the time.
That is just a terrible place to be
because
we find ourselves in this situation
where both sides
are literally siding
with enemies of America
rather than the opposition party
within the country.
I mean, you see Republican
MAGA people with t shirts that say,
I'd rather be with Russia than Democrats.
I mean, I mean, Trump stood with Putin
against our intelligence agencies.
Fox News literally uses
Russian talking points.
I mean, Tucker
Carlson went over there and did the whole
dog and pony show
backing up Putin, basically.
And on the left,
you see them marching for Hamas,
a terrorist organization.
This is a terrible place to be
and it can happen here.
The last chapter in the book
is called Civil War.
And it's you know,
you hear more about it all the time.
People who are actually pining for it.
Civil War.
Come on, let's do this thing.
Let's get this going.
Let's have this national divorce.
It can't work.
It won't work.
Half the country
is not going to self-deport.
Even if you win every election.
So what? What?
What should I mean?
Somebody like Obama came in
trying to be the unifier.
Remember, he famously would invite the
then speaker, John Boehner,
to two White House screenings.
Boehner went to a couple,
got got so much shit for it,
never went back.
Biden has tried to to reach out.
What's the strategy that might work?
Apparently not that.
I mean, I think we're past that.
I don't know. I don't know what it is.
I mean,
I think this goes back to
the Supreme Court fights that we had,
like in the
was it late eighties or early nineties?
This goes back a long way.
So it's going to take a long way
to get back to some sort of normalcy.
I don't know.
Sometimes you have to hit bottom
before you can go back to the top.
I don't know what that means
in this country, but I know one thing.
Donald Trump is not going
to concede the election.
So what
happens in January 2025, on the 20th
when Inauguration Day rolls around
and he didn't win the election?
He's not just going to go away.
And if he wins
and he's
the president and January 20th, 2025,
he's never going to give that up
because he doesn't understand
the Constitution, doesn't care about it.
I don't think he's ever read it.
He just knows power and winning
and our side is right.
Where do you get more hate
mail from the left or right?
I don't know, because I don't read it.
I that don't.
I don't care.
There's more.
Pleasure to have you. Thank you. Always.