I just do not like the attitude.

And this gets back to what you said when you first sat down there, Like liberals are different than we were kids.

These are not our grandfathers.

Liberals, you know, I, I think liberals are just liberals.

But whatever, for whatever reason, woke became the word.

I know it's not always blah, blah, blah, but that's the word people use now for left gone too far and left just change their attitude in very in a lot of ways, they're the opposite of liberals.

I mean, liberalism was about let's have a color blind society.

That's not where they're at.

They're at, let's notice race always 1st and fundamentally as the most important thing.

That's not a good attitude.

That's not it's not even appropriate to today, I don't think.

And it doesn't make things better.

It's divisive.

It's divisive and it's I don't think it's consistent with, you know, the, the people I know I.

Welcome back to posting Through IT.

Thanks for joining us another week and joining us for another installment in our Who the Hell series.

I'm Sherrod Holt.

And I'm Mike Hayden.

And I'm Will Weldon.

This episode's all about Bill Maher.

Few self-described liberals draw more anger from the left, from progressive, even from other self-described liberals, than Bill Maher does.

If you've been on the political corners of social media in recent years, you've probably seen people getting mad at Bill, circulating clips of him doing embarrassing things on his show.

Bill has a very dry delivery.

Sometimes he tells a joke, sometimes he just states his opinion.

But it's safe to say Bill really pisses people off.

The flip side of this is that if you search through MAGA social media, you will periodically see Trump lovers sharing Bill Maher clips as a way of boosting their own argument.

Like see, even Bill Maher can see the truth about this.

Even Bill Bill Maher knows.

Mago often uses Bill Maher as a stock liberal who can see the truth about his own side.

Bill has had a very successful, lucrative and long media career and his current show called Real Time is on HBO that's lasted 1/4 of a century, which is like The Simpsons in TV years.

I mean, few shows have gone on that long today, Real time brings in half a million viewers on HBO, including my dad.

And that crosses over to like a million plus if it gets reruns on CNN, which is, you know, aspires to be the standard bearer of good old centrism in this country, if this country has any center left to speak of.

As you're going to learn today, Bill has built a centrist brand by describing himself as a liberal and being anti Trump while also punching left and more importantly, punching down.

Punching down is Mars favorite mode of attack as a comedian and as a pundit.

When Mar punches down, he tends to chase safer targets like Muslims and trans people.

He also really likes to target idealistic young activists, like the kinds you'd find on college campuses.

Bill's really interesting because he is Ito has been treated by all these corporate media conglomerates as the face of centrism, and because of that, he has a huge influence on the way that media beyond his show talks about politics.

So today we're going to try to figure out who the hell.

Who the hell?

Who the hell?

Who the hell is Bill Maher?

And with us to talk about this is comedian Will Weldon.

I just want to say off script, I love will.

I love Will's work.

I was really excited, wanted to reach out to him for this and I'm so happy he said yes.

And he's willing to sit down for what is probably going to be like 5 hours of talking about Bill Maher with us.

In addition to his excellent work as a stand up comic, will host a very useful and very funny, but useful because it's I you know, I I can get everything I need to know about Bill Maher from will show called I hate Bill Maher and say I hate Bill Maher podcast.

We will put links to his work in the show notes.

Now, just briefly here is here's my reason for wanting to do a show about Bill Maher.

Who the hell is will Bill Maher?

Because because I sort of had to convince Jared and it really came down to like after October 7th.

I think I was really emotional.

I mean, like, you know, I've talked about on the show, people in my family.

I have people who are Palestinian, things like that.

I have a lot of very close Jewish friends and things.

And there was a Facebook argument I had with somebody.

You know, this is the person I knew from childhood.

I didn't, you know, I wasn't really close to them.

And I was pleading with them to acknowledge the number of children that had been killed in Gaza.

They kind of cut off.

They do that thing that people do on social where they cut off the conversation.

And then they kind of posted separately a link to something right where they're clearly talking to me but not talking to me.

You got subtweeted.

Yeah, I got subtweeted by somebody I like went to like elementary school with, and it was a link to Bill Maher talking about Gaza.

I, I just blocked them on Facebook.

It's like a real, like primal moment.

And like since then, I don't know.

There's just something about like, oh, is it really?

That's who you're just going to trot out?

So I just like, since then, I've just been wanting to go deeper on the show on this guy.

And yeah, what made you want to do it?

Well, I got to say, I fucking hate Bill Maher.

That's that's it.

I don't like anything about him.

I think he's a fraud.

While his shows may have been interesting at various points and maybe even had some value, I think he as a host, especially with Real Time, has literally never been good at what he does.

And I resent the fact that as my my brain screams out for some sort of order and for things to make sense in a disorganized universe, he is to me just the prime example of how like, nothing makes any sense, nothing that should happen does.

And nobody, whoever deserves to, no one ever gets what they literally, to quote Clint Eastwood in the film Unforgiven deserves, got nothing to do with it.

I think that is why I started a podcast about how I hate Bill Maher.

I'm really coming to terms with the fact that we are burdened by mega celebrities who really, really have either no talent OR they have a certain amount of talent that that kind of cress.

And then they they kind of just kind of hold on to it by being an asshole.

But let's actually just get into Bill Maher and where he came from.

He's born in 1956 in New York City and he is a boomer.

I look this off to make sure because 1956, I wasn't sure, you know, is he like some sort of cusp of Gen.

X or something?

No, he's a flat out boomer.

But he's a young boomer, and he is a young boomer relative to to say, Donald Trump.

But technically he is a boomer.

So Bill grew up in Rivervale, New Jersey.

Rivervale is wealthy.

It's predominantly white.

Will what was his family like?

So he was raised a Catholic and his dad is an Irishman.

But he, he stopped, he says he stopped me really being Catholic when he was like 13 because his dad had issues with, I think either abortion or birth control with the church and ended up storming out and they, they didn't go back.

And then in his late teens, he learned that he's Jewish on his mother's side.

And it's an odd part of his identity because he has talked about it, and he has talked about how he feels pride towards his dad because he imagines people weren't thrilled about his dad marrying a Jewish woman.

But he also is like, weirdly evasive when people directly say, well, you're Jewish.

He will sort of obfuscate and be like, well, you know, because I think he thinks maybe it's like a really, I don't know.

I'm only here to psychoanalyze the non racial parts of his identity I think.

Well, we're going to get into some of that later, but I, I, I think it's interesting that he finds out he's Jewish at 19.

He later, or I guess probably early decides he's an atheist, but he also kind of is a Zionist as well, which is a kind of a weird combination.

I don't know if he would call himself that, but he calls himself a staunch supporter of Israel, which to me sounds like a Zionist.

So he was not popular as a kid.

He mentions frequently that he was bullied via ostracization.

Well, they wouldn't pick his song for a Pledge of Allegiance.

I don't understand.

Is that his?

You put that in there?

Well, so I don't.

Know it's just that he'd be like you know how you pick a song for the play you sing a song for the Pledge of Allegiance and they would never ever pick mine and I've.

Asked What does that mean?

I've asked people what does that mean?

And all of them are like I I couldn't tell you what that means.

That's a joke, Jared.

It's a joke of some kind.

He's listed at some places as 565758, so not exactly the most imposing guy in the world.

He worked as a stock boy for the A&P supermarket.

According to things he said on podcasts, he claimed to be very shy with girls and that he struggled to connect.

That's like a big thing he's been talking about lately, as Will told us before we went on this podcast.

And here he is on a on a on a recent podcast with Barbara Eden talking about that he how he's an insect.

One of the problems we have today I'm and and the the sexes are just moving in opposite directions in every possible way.

I mean, there, there's just a lot of hate for the other.

There's in cells.

Those are guys, you know who that is involuntarily celibate?

They're guys who can't get laid, which, you know, no shame.

I used to be an in cell.

We didn't have a name for it.

And when I advertised that I can't get laid, I didn't want to join a club with other fucking losers who can't get laid.

I just it was like, you can't get laid.

Well, do something about it, you know, I masturbated and plotted how I could get better.

I OK, and I don't do that today.

They just hate on the way they blame the women.

It's.

Like a 94 year old woman he's talking to there.

Yeah, yeah.

And later on when I was pulling the clip for this, he goes on to suggest that this elderly woman create an Only Fans account because she would kiss on only Fans.

So Bill attended Cornell University at the same time as Keith Olbermann, who has not been in the news recently for any specific reason.

Keith Olberman said on his podcast that Bill Maher started his own college humor paper, so he's showing an interest in comedy, and that starts to play out through the 1980s.

Tell us about that, Will.

How funny you brought that up about Keith Olbermann's newsworthiness, because I'm realizing that's something they would actually be able to have a conversation about these days.

So in the 1980s, he he moved to New York and he started doing stand up in New York.

He likes to talk about this is like his broke period.

He'll be like, I was so broke, I was so broke.

But he he started getting paid.

I mean, it was a stand up comedy boom.

So you could like make money doing stand up comedy pretty easily.

There were like 15 comedy clubs in every city.

And he was kind of in like the mid tea.

He was like a catch a rising star guy in New York.

And then that led to him getting some success and he moved out to Los Angeles where he was getting some TV spots.

He also his mentor was a ritual.

He said his his mentor is Richard Belzer and his hero is George Carlin.

And actually, when they've been on real, real time, you can like see the differences in those two dynamics play out in the way he looks up to both of them a lot.

But in my opinion, Carlin would hate this stuff that he does.

Am I do?

What do you think?

I mean, I don't know.

You said he's been on Bill's show.

What I mean, how does that go?

Are they friendly or?

Yes, I mean, who?

Look, somebody is like, please, please, I'm begging you, come do my show.

You're the best.

And you get there and they're like this next guy.

Oh my God, he's the greatest guy to ever do it.

And I'd love to be as good as him, but I never will be.

It's Jared Holt.

Jared, you'd have a little bit of fondness for that guy.

I probably wouldn't be an asshole.

And it's also, it's like, you know, Carlin it, it, it's like there weren't a lot of guys who are trans.

There weren't a lot of guys on TV being like, oh, the man in the sky is going to grant you wishes.

So all those guys got along at least a little bit.

So Bill starts getting frequent guest spots on Johnny Carson and David Letterman's show.

Here he is in 1985 on Carson's show.

He's looking very fresh faced and talking about President Reagan.

It was a popular move.

But see, that is the amazing thing about Ronald Reagan is that even when he does something policy wise that people don't like, he's still popular, you know, and he's such a likable.

I'm that way too.

He does something so nice.

I don't like.

I want to be mad at him, but you can you turn on the TV.

It's one of those you Reagan.

I'm Oh, Ronnie.

Oh, as long as you put it that way, yes, I can agree with you on that.

You know, you can't not like him.

You see me going on for the weekend Friday.

He's got the black pants walking the dog waves.

It's like your dad is running the country, you know?

Will, you're a comedian.

How has that been?

If you go like, oh, Ronald Reagan, you know, you want to be mad at the guy, but then you turn on the TV and you go, I'm not mad at this guy.

That the act out is only only adds to the joke if it's somehow brings a new surprise or adds a new element.

The worst kind of comedic act act outs are when you just do the thing you just said, to the surprise of no one.

You, you guys are sitting there like just staring depressed as as that rolled and I'm the only one laughing because I'm like, this is this is the least least funny, most ass licking comedy bit I have ever heard in my life.

I mean, but yeah, I mean, maybe I'm maybe I'm just so brain poisoned.

I I prefer bad comedy, but it was just so bad.

It just like so palpably stupid.

And and and also it's just such an effort to say like, oh, I'm kind of the liberal guy, you know, some of that.

But like, please, I don't want to alienate the many voters in this country who voted for Reagan, a very popular president at the time.

Not exactly the guy would go to for hard hitting political analysis, but our country did apparently after that.

Will, you mentioned that Bill Maher moved to LA.

What's he, what's he doing in LA?

He just couldn't make it in New York or what?

Yes, thank you for their that very organic Segway, Jared.

So he moved to LA and he started booking pilots.

He actually had like a lot of success as an actor, which was the thing I was.

There are a few things I've been as startled to discover as I was to discover that doing the podcast.

He had a show with Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard and Bronson Pinchot who obviously in that list of 3 is going to be listed last and.

Shout out to Pinchot.

Yeah, becoming.

Y'all like Pinchot?

I've heard he's a huge He's not a great guy to spend time with.

And then he also was on.

So he did a lot of guest spots.

But he starred on Sarah, and he also was one of the stars of a Showtime sitcom that was sort of like around the time It's Garry Shandling Show was on, and it's called Hard Knocks.

It's truly weird, but in a way that ends up being kind of disappointing.

It's can I just say quickly before we play a clip from this, that like I when I was watching this and I was imagining what it would be like to watch it on hallucinogenic drugs, it like I would, I would absolutely someone have to call would would absorb to call the ambulance for me because I would be like crying terrified.

It's just like it's it's so stilted and upsetting and weird and the dialogue doesn't make sense.

I don't understand how this was even on TV.

Let's listen.

Who's got a hankering for fried cheese?

Free Silky.

Somebody's hungry.

Settle down, Nikki.

The plenty for everybody.

Good put.

The cheese down silky Nick do our job.

We're taking you back to jail.

I never went they.

Threw the case out of court.

You were guilty as sin.

I know, but I showed the judge my lucky photograph, him and the D as daughter Silkies.

On a community service program, create great content.

I love this.

The guy who plays Silky was a producer of Arrested Development, for the record.

Oh wow, he.

Was He's like a very prolific television writer and producer.

But what would my thing is like what, what, what like when I say stilted, like that was obviously stilted.

And also the other thing is it's just like, where were the where were the jokes?

It was like, what?

What's going on?

Wait a second.

I know I hate like, Bill Maher, but even I can see that, the humor in a guy who talks like this.

What's funnier than a guy who talks like that?

And his name's Silky, and you can't see it, but he's very tall on the show.

That's actually a clip from the best episode of Hard Knocks.

Because it's the weirdest episode.

And then they get progressively less weird and like, way way way worse.

I'm casting you.

Is that guy in my Hard Knocks reboot?

So he was in movies too.

He was in Oh my God, DC Cab is sort of the normal movie he was in, but he also starred in two movies that were both written and directed by the original credited screenwriter of Pretty Woman, and they're called Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death and and Pizza Man.

We've got a clip from Pizza Man here.

I want to know how the pizza fits in.

There's no military takeover in the United States, is there?

The Army, Navy and Air Force couldn't agree on what kind of shit to serve on a shingle, let alone how to take over the country, right?

Right.

My life.

Well come on, fess up.

We smoked pot in college, but great point.

I was just in the long twos.

My father pulled the streets to get me into the national job.

Oh shit, I'm sorry it.

Was.

That's enough, Elmo.

It was me.

I ordered a piece.

OK, I'm just going to stop the clip here.

You didn't get you didn't get who ordered the pizza?

Isn't it Mayor Tom Bradley?

No, it's Donald Trump ordered the pizza.

Right.

He's he's shaking down this military guy being like, who ordered the fucking pizza?

Who?

I need my $15.23 and then Donald Trump is like I ordered the pizza.

Right, right, right.

Right.

Yeah.

And you might have heard him go.

That's enough Elmo.

That's because Bill Maher's character's name is Elmo Bunt.

And it's like, so The thing is, it is a comedy.

It's like a, it's like a satire.

It's working for.

Me.

It it's like it wears out its welcome pretty quick because it is in the scenes are interminably long and I think in modern movies they cut way too much.

It's like, let the actors act, give the actors like 10 seconds of a this, this you will beg for them to cut.

It is you're like, I'm sorry.

It is still an establishing wide what's going on.

Nobody's moved.

There's no no business, no stage direction.

Elmo bunt maxing.

No, dude, it's funny you said that because when I was pulling the clip, you know, I, I have to like watch it while the audio's recording and all I could think was just like, get the fuck on with it.

Like what's the?

Yeah.

He's he's been interrogating this guy for like a minute and 1/2 right now.

It there's he walks in on Geraldine Ferraro and I think Ronald Reagan in bed together.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley tries to shoot him to death in a warehouse with an AK47, which bothered me.

They kind of talk shit about Tom Bradley.

And I'm like, I'm sorry.

Tom Bradley is like the most beloved.

Los Angeles hates all its mayors except except for Tom Bradley.

And also Michael Dukakis gives him a ride to his house.

And I want, I really want to emphasize you could listen to what I just said and then play clips of every single one of the people doing the impressions of those characters.

You would not be able to identify a single one of them.

They are the worst impressions you've ever heard in your entire life.

The movie is fascinating but gets like really dull really quickly.

He also has an extended dance sequence in it.

And the one thing I will give him credit for is it does seem like he is able to do a backhand spring when he's like 30.

In 1992, he kind of makes his transition into a fully politically, you know, coded career, I think it's safe to say, because he's on Comedy Central's Indecision 92.

And for people who don't know exactly what that was, it was sort of an early forerunner for like the kind of Jon Stewart comedy that would come in the next decade.

And it featured Al Franken.

Chris Rock was involved, Arianna Huffington, who I, who I believe Will, was like a regular guest.

Yes, Bills, for many years after that.

He fakes a proposal to her on the very last episode of Politically Incorrect.

OK, Yeah.

Exactly.

So yeah, that's how close they are.

So, yeah, I mean it like one example of one of the stunts that they did was that Al Franken went down in the press pool and kind of did a live comedic run while talking about George W George HW Bush was talking.

And people found that really funny at the time.

And it really gave birth to this sort of political comedy entertainment landscape that continues on today and that launched politically incorrect.

What?

Was politically incorrect because this is like his huge brick right?

It's his show.

It's his baby.

He talks about how he'd be like, this was the show I always imagined.

It's me and just, you know, when I just be sitting around talking to my friends, I was like, this should be a show, a thing every single comedian has said at some point in their careers, like hanging out with the other company.

Like this should be a show, but it's him for panelists and the the intro, there are a few different intros over the years.

There's one where they're sort of pasting his face.

It's like cut ups and of various, you know, moments in, in history and they're putting his face over at one point, a guy in a KKK robe, which I also agree is the kind of thing where if I was watching the opening for my TV show, I'd be like, perhaps we can choose a different historical figure to put my face over.

And but he is like, he loves to be like edgy.

Like that's like his thing is he's he's transgressive.

He'll be like, we have the conversations other people don't have, but when we have these conversations, people watching at home are like, finally, I'm not crazy, somebody else is saying it.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

He had like a kind of a, what I would describe as a modified mullet.

Then it's.

Tough, yeah.

It's a difficult haircut to look at.

I don't know why it no one stopped him from doing that, but it seemed to, it didn't seem to slow him down any.

And some of the jokes that they would tell were it, this was the tone of the jokes.

I you know, I'll leave the audience to decide what they think of this.

Yeah, yeah.

This was what like Bill Maher was like.

This should be a show.

Bill, have you heard about the new book, the new book that's put out, been put out for perspective illegal aliens.

It's called 1000 Games and Puzzles to do in the Trunk of a Car.

So.

I I can explain what that is.

So for the first season of the show, it ended with a segment he called Cleaning Out My Notebook where he would sit with another comic who is a friend of his, Bill something, and they would just literally just sit there and read out of the notebooks they wrote new jokes in.

This is like this, this is the kind of thing that I would propose to Jarrett to do on the show.

And then he'd be like, no, man.

Like, yeah.

But if these guys are on HBO, they're like, yeah, I'll just read the dumb shit that's in my notebook.

Yeah.

No, I I would veto that immediately.

Oh yeah, this is at least Comedy Central Pre South Park.

So like anybody listening to this is like doubling the number of people who have heard this segment on the show before.

Like it just it had really low numbers while on Comedy Central, but I think they were good for Comedy Central because nobody watched it.

It went to a network that a lot of people watch, which was ABC, which looking back on it, I, I think that just kind of tells you a bit about where the country was at, that this was like major network television, this kind of thing.

And it was very successful there.

Will do you have any theories on why it was so successful?

I I mean, it's, it's kind of crazy to think about jokes like that getting put in front of, you know, the unwashed masses of, of TV viewers who, you know, these days just want to see the, the Masked Singer and who's, who's under the mask singing a pop song.

You know, it's like that sort of demographic is now getting Bill Maher blasted to their living room.

So my first controversial thing is I think the reason it was successful because it is fundamentally often sometimes the show is atrocious.

They did, you know, one every night of the week for like 20 minutes.

Some of them were so bad.

But sometimes politically incorrect is incredible television because they don't go for, like, they're not trying to get quality panelists.

They're trying to create a scene.

So there is an episode where two of the four panelists are Tom Arnold and Carrot Top, and the show's on it like midnight.

So, you know, before the Internet.

Or some of our younger viewers.

I just want to say Tom Arnold was, but he was he like Roseanne Barr's husband, right?

First husband?

Yeah, he had a whole career of his own.

One of his famous, he had a he did a live touring show called the Tom Arnold Show where he would have a tank filled with goldfish next to him on stage.

And over the course of the show, he would kill all of the goldfish in the fish tank over the course of the show.

And that was like his famous.

That was like his famous live show that he.

Did OK.

Who the hell is Tom Arnold?

They're getting episode ideas here.

But like, OK.

And then Carrot Top, all I know is as indescribable.

Yeah, it's a like he was a prop comic.

He's not like Gallagher.

Gallagher used to like, blow up watermelons and stuff, right?

Keratop.

But Keratop was a a prop comic of some kind.

He had a suitcase filled with gag props, so he'd be like, oh, look at this.

It's a it's a toilet seat for when you have to sit on the toilet for a long time.

And it's like a toilet seat with the like woven beads that like cab drivers used to have on their, their car seats in like the 90s.

And he'd be like, and then he, it's just him pulling shit out of a bag and being like this crazy thing I've come up with and then tossing it aside.

But at some point, he was also the, he was the most popular, I want to emphasize he was the most popular comedian in the country for a number of years.

And then as his popularity waned, he was like, well, what better time than now to start a cycle of anabolic steroids?

And he is now so jacked and so vascular.

You look at him and you go, this guy hasn't had a glass of water in 12 years.

The question is the you know is the anti woke though.

That's the real question anyway.

I don't.

I there were and also I've heard from people now that his show's really low energy.

So now instead of being like with the thing, that's like, he's right here, arrow through the head, whatever.

Kill you shut up bro like use toilet seat OK so continue so about he's like Maher is creating scenes like he said he's he's.

It's people on television who literally the last episode of Politically Incorrect, Ariana Huffington and Ann Coulter both go You were the person who gave both of us our first national media appearances.

We both owe our careers to you.

So, like, he would have he, Christine O'Donnell, if you guys recall, a Tea Party favorite.

Christine O'Donnell, the witch candidate who?

Yeah, who lost to Chris Coons, who otherwise would have lost to the Republican.

Everybody thought he was going to end up running against her campaign was sunk by her appearances on Politically incorrect because she would go on Politically incorrect and go I'm a witch.

And that's like where all that shit started.

Dabbled into witchcraft.

I hung around.

People who who were.

Doing these.

Things.

I'm not sure how old either of you are, but Mike, you.

I am 46 years young.

Yes.

I'm 12 years old, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You're you're, you're.

No.

I'm like your boy audio slave.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm peak age to have like had Bill Maher chattering in the background for like most of my life.

Like I'd be like with my high school girlfriend and like looking for stuff to like have on the TV while we're just like kind of hanging out to like make out or whatever.

And they'd be like shit like Bill Maher, run it and be like, turn this guy's socks, turn it off.

So that's like.

That's so troubling, making out to Bill that's that's almost as bad as when we.

We, we would.

It would be we We made out to Beavis and Butthead, that's what.

OK, yeah, my, my friend in my friend in 10th grade fingered his girlfriend for the first time on the bed behind me while we were all watching The Dark Crystal.

And that's why the Dark Crystal I like, can't watch it.

It's like traumatizing to relive that experience just sitting there looking straightforward, being like, do not look back.

It's it's like, so it's like in the 90s, nobody was going on television and being like, I don't believe in God.

And Bill Maher was always like, I smoke weed, I'm a hedonist, I don't believe in God.

And I all of those things genuinely were like very edgy and transgressive at the time.

So it's like, and it's on at midnight and it's cheap.

It's just some people sitting around a table.

So it's like if it develops any kind of following at all, you can charge more for ads than if you're just running rewind reruns nobody cares about at midnight.

So you can make more money off of it.

And it's incredibly cheap to produce.

So it's like they got media attention.

It was controversial, it was talked about.

They could get advertisers, they could also lose advertisers, happen frequently.

But it's like it was a very old television, old network television model of success where it's like this isn't prime time.

We don't need a big hit.

We just need something that enough people will talk about.

It's worth keeping on the air.

And he always was, until he was very much not for them.

I'm going to queue up the next audio, which is from this show.

I just want to just pause at one thought about it, which is, yes, it may.

I think more of the idea is that it seemed edgy and transgressive at the time in the 90s.

But when you look at the 90s as a whole, there was a lot of people doing that sort of thing and succeeding at the same time.

And the whole body of it feels like a lot of like it doesn't, you know, it doesn't like culturally there was, it was a very easy place to be an atheist, for instance.

I think publicly in the 90s it became one.

Maybe it wasn't in the 80s, but I feel like in the 90s it became a little bit easier.

So it may have felt more transgressive than it actually was.

And like, I just think about that in terms of Bill Maher and how safe he seemed talking about Reagan versus where he was a decade later.

I don't know if you disagree with that.

Well, where are where?

Where Where did you grow up?

Queens, Long Island.

Yeah, I, I grew up in Arkansas and even like I'm younger than Mike, but even in my life growing up when I was thinking like I'm agnostic or, you know, atheist is even too strong.

I, I, I'm just like, not I, I don't feel connected to religion in my life, but it's just doesn't draw me.

Even growing up in Arkansas, like in the 2000s, that felt like I had to be careful who I told, you know?

That's fair.

That's my like a little bit of my bias there.

People, people look at you different.

Yeah, I grew up like I grew up.

It's different in Canada.

The Catholic school system is a part of the public system there because of the, it's like a deal they had made with the French Canadians.

But like, I, it was like crazy to me the first time I confronted the idea of like, not believing in God.

It was like so scary to me.

And I was afraid people would find out.

So I think it also is like, I'll also say like, yeah, your point stands that like nobody cool watch this show.

And was like, holy shit, man, this is crazy.

It's like if you were a.

Loser.

If if you were a loser, this shit fucking this shit could rock.

And also he would have like like Boots Riley was on there in the 90s going I'm a communist to like the jeers and boos of the audience and other panelists there.

There would just be like people on there who refused to back down and to the show close credit.

They would book them like they would book people like that because they didn't.

They weren't like we need a good high minded conversation.

They were just like, we just want people on to be honest and like, we'll deal with that.

It it's like the meme.

Whatever, this shit must go really hard if you're stupid anyway.

Well, Mar got in trouble one of the first times he got, like, in pretty big trouble on that show you mentioned before his desire to be edgy and be and be perceived as edgy.

And he got in trouble for saying there was no functionally no difference between children with mental disabilities and dogs.

Do you want to play the clip?

Yeah.

I'll, I'll just give listeners a heads up.

He does not describe them as children with mental disabilities here.

But we're going to, we're going to play the clip just so it's there.

But I've often said that if I had, I have two dogs, if I had two retarded children, I'd be a hero.

And yet the dogs, which are pretty much the same thing, what they're they're sweet, they're loving, they're kind, but they don't mentally advance it all.

I'm going to throw my shoe at you for that one.

What dogs are like retarded children?

The show is living up to its name.

Show is really, you know.

What nephew?

My 9 year old nephew was retarded.

I've never thought of him like a little dog.

Also just kind of where things were culturally that that is we're, we're also using that word in the defense here.

That's right.

Yes, that's a good point.

I, I mean, my favorite part of that clip, and yes, I have a favorite part is when it's very like obvious that the, the audience is turning on him where they just had enough clearly and they're like, I just love it because you can just feel it in the room.

Yeah, because he says it in the audience, laughs like it's a punch line.

They're like, Oh my God, I can't believe he said that.

And then he double s down and that that the second reaction after he says it again is like actually Bill, not sure.

Yeah, it's good.

It's good when somebody is like, says something and you're like, ho, ho, he said it again.

And they're like, no, I am deadly serious right now.

And you're like, uh oh, we got to get out of here.

Anyway, I don't think there's much to say about that one.

It doesn't like, it didn't even feel like there was a joke there, right?

It's just like he, he, he, I feel like he's, he's got this idea, like he's just, he's telling hard truths, but it doesn't seem to sink his career.

He actually does apologize for that one later.

He, he actually does sincerely apologize for that one, specifically to parents of children with mental disabilities.

He, he ends up apologizing.

There's a Howard Stern interview where he talked about and he is fine with apologizing but is very angry that anyone other than those parents got mad at him for saying that because he's he accuses them of just being performative outrage merchants.

You wrote that the show is like really sexist and you mentioned that there was like, I, I looked for I, I, I couldn't find what you, what you mentioned in here, but there's apparently some super clip of him just saying like, hey baby, hey sweetie or whatever.

They did like maybe like a 20th anniversary special or something or 18th anniversary special that might be on if it's not on HBOII think I have it on my computer.

I can throw it up for you guys, but there's just a part in it where he's like, and I was capable of growth.

And they show a, they show a clip from politically incorrect of him being like, listen, people, you know, people tell me like, oh, Bill, the way you talk about women, it's not OK.

And I'll admit, you know, I have a lot of my friends on the show and I'm friendly with them.

And I, I greet them in a friendly way.

And then it's a super cut of him being like, hey, baby, hey, sweetie, hey, sugar.

And he's like kissing them on the cheeks and like pulling them in for a hug.

And, and then he's like, but you know what?

People have told me they don't like it.

And I, I know, you know, people tell you, hey, this bothers women.

You shouldn't keep doing it.

On the second episode of Real Time, he has Doctor Monica Crowley on the show and he introduces her by going Doctor Monica Crowley.

The crowd claps.

He looks at Larry Miller and he goes, that's a good looking doctor, huh, Larry?

The crowd laughs and he goes, how'd you like to get a checkup from her?

And he's like, this guy Never, ever did not change.

EW.

She also I think plagiarized her doctorate is what people discovered, something like that.

Jumping to March 1998, Bill Maher gets in trouble again, this time for defending a 35 year old female teacher who had an ongoing sexual relationship with a 14 year old boy.

Here's what he said on the show.

A woman who's over 20 years older and she.

Raped this kid.

Raped.

What?

Come on, are.

You.

Forced, she forced.

How do you know and how can?

You.

Well, how do you know that she didn't rape him?

How can a woman.

Know that she didn't seduce him.

How can a woman rape a man?

I think that you should see the look on Henry Rollins face.

Yeah, that's, that's a good point.

That's a good point.

I remember Henry Rollins was like, no.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then Bill's response is like, oh, so you're on on her side the the woman on the panel who's like, what's wrong with you?

Yeah, it's, it's not just any it that's literally he's talking about Mary Kalik Turno, who he continued to defend for years afterwards, where he would be like, no, that was true love, 'cause they're still together.

I have a feeling this might come up a little bit later.

These attitudes about oh.

Yeah.

About younger people and sexual relationships with older people.

But politically incorrect doesn't last forever.

How does that show wind down?

It's it's around like the turn of the 2000s, right?

Yes.

So I'll, I'll say I, I didn't send you guys a clip.

I didn't send you guys a clip of this.

But in sort of late September, some guys did get a little rowdy and hijack some planes and fly them into some pretty important buildings in New York City.

So that's.

Actually, what that's that's that's what.

This next clip is in reference to yes.

Hold on.

I know.

MMM, You live in New York.

Do you know what Will's talking about right now?

I don't know what's going on I.

Think it's I think it was referred to as like the bachelor party from hell or something.

I don't remember the details of who did it and what the circumstances were.

So it was a very sensitive time in America.

I was in Canada, baby.

I was in Canada.

I was primal loser shit.

So I moved down here.

I moved to California from Toronto, but I grew up in Calgary.

Oh my God, Calgary's like a white collar oil town.

We're such, we're such posers.

On 9/11 we were like, well, we're a pretty important oil city.

What if they attack us next?

The most pathetic shit.

Well, I mean, you know, Trump, Trump may, Trump may still attack them over that.

So you know.

North America was like that, I said.

I grew up in Arkansas.

We were really close to like where Walmart was headquartered.

And they're like, what if they attacked the Walmart Home Office?

And they said OK.

Sorry, OK all.

Right, they shouldn't laugh also.

There's nothing I want more than to America than for America to attack Canada in the way In the way.

I'm sure there were many Soviet expats who longed for Hitler to invade the Soviet Union.

Like yeah, give it a shot buddy.

Go and see how fun the conditions of that country are once you get 3 miles north of the border.

Yeah.

Well, so basically he says something that as like, I don't know how you guys feel about this comment, but I just feel like it's not that bad compared to like some of the other things he's gotten in trouble for.

Essentially what he says is he says they're basically talking about whether how you should sort of how you, how should we talk about these terrorists that pulled off this horrific attack and, you know, on the World Trade Center.

And Bill says you shouldn't call them cowards.

We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2000 miles away.

That's coward.

That is staying.

In the airplane when it hits the building.

Say what you want about it, not coward.

Who was his guest on that one?

Mike.

There was a, it's of course a panel, so there's more than one person.

But the the one that stood out to me while he was saying that was Dinesh D'souza, the right wing conspiracy theorist and crank who you know, you would think should not have a platform necessarily on any kind of sensible political show.

But there he was.

And I think he agrees with Bill Maher as well on the episode.

I'm pretty sure Dinesh D'souza is like, yeah, no, we shouldn't because I think it's in the process of being like, yes, we should have taken these guys more seriously under the presidency of that disgusting moron pervert Bill Clinton.

But I still think he is like, yeah, that's that's true.

This is like the one a lot of people point this out as like it was the one good thing he said he got fired for it and then he never said anything good again.

I don't know if it qualifies necessarily as good, but I mean, it's like it's a very good like, but it but it seems like very defensible to me where you're saying you're saying, you know, it takes a lot of guts.

It's like saying that like, you know, Sean Combs is like was like a, you know, tenacious business executive, like true.

And he's also, you know, he's also many other things.

But like, I mean, you should be able to isolate and say that like, yeah, these psychopathic killers, you know, went through with their statistic plan, but it was right in the aftermath of that.

The next episode comes of this and got another guest to drop name drop on here.

Who his his his token right wing guy is actually Dennis Prager, a younger Dennis Prager whose health has declined in recent years but is responsible for a lot of really dumb university Prager university tutorials for children and other things.

Not not a not not the best guy, but so he has him on and then he says he does a kind of a slick marketing thing.

I don't know if you agree with this Will but I thought it was like a self branding thing where he's just like if it'll make the country whole then get rid of me.

But I just want to say that if destroying this show would provide a venting for the anger out there, I would gladly do that for my country in its time of news and.

He's a hero.

He's a it is kind of slick, though, right?

It's.

Like, I thought it was like for like, like for a purely marketing point of view, it was the best way to take heat in that moment.

And he also he had done like 7 HBO specials or something at that point.

He in the past had had dinner with the head of HBO.

Like, I'm sure that guy knew if something happens to me, I'm taking a year off and then HBO is going to be right there.

Like I'm I really genuinely, for a long time since starting the podcast, have believed like he knew HBO was always an option.

Yeah, that would make sense.

He certainly didn't seem too worried about losing the show, but he does 2002.

But But before he gets there, he starts to get increasingly comfortable attacking Arabs and Muslims on the show, sometimes directly to their faces.

There's a kind of a notorious clip with Lebanese author and professor Assad Abu Khalil around the time that the US invaded Afghanistan.

Let's listen to that real quick.

They have nothing to explain.

They are just like any other American.

And simply.

Simply, it is high time that you believe that Muslim Arabs are just as entitled like anybody else to have their own shares of kooks, raises and terrorists without having to judge the entire legend except.

Except that what's facetious about that argument, excuse me, is that the kooks and the terrorists in the Christian and the Jewish world are truly just a little fringe.

In the.

Muslim world.

They draw from a vast pool, pool of support which is not in any other religion.

Well, so don't try to feed me that let.

Me feed you Well now I know you know you're not Arabic.

But well, I I just realized.

Not only do you know Arabic, but your math is not great.

So you think that 19 Muslim Arabs who were behind the September bombing speak for a billion and 200 million people in the world?

And how do you say?

On what basis that there is?

I've had many Muslims here say, you know what, most it's 20% and I go well, OK, that's 20% million people I.

Teach the Middle East.

It is nowhere around that you.

Teach in America.

Most Muslim and I go to the Middle East and I lecture.

A lot of stuff like this.

Yeah, this is the other thing too.

It's like I'm politically incorrect.

He would talk to anybody.

He he is more racist towards Muslims, Arabs, but politically incorrect.

The the show is ended and it's kind of the end of the era where he is willing to just be openly rude to his guests.

Willy nilly with Willy nilly.

Oh my God, I've never said Willy nilly in my entire life.

That's in the script for anybody who's listening to this.

I I read it in a script.

That's why I said that.

I would never say that in my own record.

MM put it in the script.

Yeah, Mike's corny.

Everybody make fun of Mike.

All right, all right.

He the the show gets the the show is is the show dies like a slow death because the all the advertisers pull out because he does genuinely lose a lot of audience.

So ABC is like the show will end at the end of the season and he goes on Larry King Live and he actually is quite gracious about it all things considered.

And then he complaints about the feminization of America in reference to news orgs kind of respect respecting Daniel Pearl's widow or I can.

It's a it's Daniel Pearl's mother.

So, yeah.

So he's the Wall Street Journal journalist and, you know, he was beheaded.

And it's his his death was put into a lot of propaganda films, which became like a real technique of Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.

They would, you know, behead people and then turn that content into propaganda and, you know, circulated around to, you know, strike fear in the heart of Westerners as well as try to bring people to their side locally.

And yet she didn't want it out.

And he basically said that this was making PeopleSoft.

Yeah, it's like he's like, he's like, oh, what are we a bunch of chicks now?

We won't even put a snuff film on the news.

Oh, I didn't know we were a bunch of.

I didn't know we were a bunch of fucking chicks, man.

We won't watch a guy get his head cut off on the news.

By the way, you can't see this on the podcast, but he does a nice little head move that feels like Nomar when he does it.

Now he, he likes to slump back and get the hand in front of and then he he also goes on and talks about how Israel has never done, Israel's never done anything wrong, which is sort of like, and then this is sort of like, I think the big news appearance he does before floating around a bit before his next big job.

Well, his next big job is Real Time, which is the show that we talked about has been on for 1/4 of a century.

The culture pretty much reabsorbs Bill Maher almost immediately.

February 21st, 2003, he is back on air.

The first episode he has Ann Coulter on who becomes a regular on the show.

And they often just kind of bicker and like, take jabs at each other.

But she's on a lot.

What were his?

In the six hundreds they were.

Twice.

They.

Absolutely they.

That gets you into Yale and this.

OHH, that's they were.

About what gores were.

They were twice what Bill Bradleys were.

No, they yes they were.

You just make shit up.

You do.

You just make shit.

I love to see Queen Anne just defending George W Bush, by the way, like his.

SAT.

Scores.

Yeah, pathetic, Pathetic.

But she's on a lot.

Will, you said earlier that didn't Anne say something to the effect of like you were, you were my first big show that I did right?

Yeah, Politically Incorrect.

The last episode of Politically Incorrect.

She and Ariana Huffington are like this.

You, you gave us our first national TV shots on this show.

Like we owe you our careers.

And it's like, look, I'm not wild about either of those figures, but one of them I am extremely not wild.

About Yeah, Mike, you have some thoughts about Ann Coulter What what did she do with this career after Bill Maher launched it I'm.

Going to get like the the average listener of posting through it is, is left of center.

I don't know who like might be right If they're just kind of, you know, interested.

They, they like our analysis, even if they don't agree.

But people may not fully know the whole deal with Ann Coulter.

A lot of people know Ann Coulter as just being like, oh, I hate Ann Coulter.

And particularly people who are of people who are like my age, that's like all they know.

They just, I hate Ann Coulter.

She's just so nasty and she's always saying a nasty thing.

And that's kind of the way she is just like a cartoon white woman who seems nasty and, and that's it.

But the reality is that Coulter has contributed, like, scores, scores of pieces to Videre, which is, you know, one of the most influential white nationalist publications to ever exist.

She is close friends with Peter Brimwell.

She worked with Peter Thiel, you know, in an attempt to to, to get Kris Kobach into Senate.

Thank God that didn't work.

Kris Kobach being like so extreme that even voters in Kansas ruled him out of a primary.

He was talking about doing drone strikes in Mexico as part of his thing.

Of course, Pete Hegseth is like probably like an inch away from actually doing that.

But that's a different story.

And I just think it's important to highlight that Ann Coulter became a celebrity that everybody knew and everybody was like, oh, I hate her.

But in reality, she was an extremist.

And whether you want to call her a white nationalist or not, you can certainly call her racist, which I think many people did as she was coming up.

And it it, it was very easy to see that.

But I mean, she was really a big part of the anti immigrant movement, the nativist movement in this country, like the real racist rights stuff that gave birth to Trump.

And in fact, her book Adios America was the big inspiring text for Trump's whole, you know, 2016 campaign take off.

She's on Bill Maher's show a lot.

The most featured guest, the most frequent guest is Andrew Sullivan, which is a name I haven't heard in forever.

Feel like the world got too weird and like moved on from his, you know, just just having a reasonable think about this.

Well, maybe Charles Murray makes some good points in his racist books.

Who knows?

I'm just wondering.

I'll tell you where he's been.

He's been on Real Time with Bill Maher, like, at least once every single season.

Yeah, he's on Club Random, too.

Imagine that, Those two guys just hanging out, drinking whiskey, smoking cigars.

Hell yeah, dude.

The best time you've ever had.

What else are they going to do?

They're not a they're not a bunch of chicks.

Before we go further on this, do you have, can you give us any insight into like what, what his attraction is to these far right figures?

Right, because he's supposedly a liberal.

He wants to be reasonable.

Right.

And that like if you want to be reasonable, you, you would not platform somebody who is has written scores of articles for vdare.com, right?

So I have to disagree.

The the reasonable thing to do is to have anyone with any clout on your TV show.

And then when they say something truly, heinously, like racist or bigoted, you lean back in your chair and go, OK, well, moving on, that's how you be reasonable.

And then you go with and you go, see, we can get along.

We can talk and be friends.

We're a model for the country.

And Milo Yiannopoulos goes, yeah, great being here with you, Bill.

Yeah.

Well, we're going to get into, we're going to get, we're going to get, we're going to get into him in a second.

Yeah.

So 2003, as we said, launches real time with Beaumark.

Just tell us a little bit about the early days of it.

He's take, he's like as you mentioned, he's taken a year where he's kind of just laying back in the cut just waiting plot in his next move and then he comes back with this show.

Tell us a little bit about the differences.

Yeah, I, I believe at this time he in between or maybe a little later, he was also hosting a very short lived Amazon TV streaming show where he would hawk products off of Amazon with guests.

Awesome.

Also, I just like to say in addition to all that, Ann Coulter also looks like The Babadook's wife, so.

I I was going to go with Cruella Deville.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I went a little super.

I almost said Bob the Babadook's white wife.

But then I was like, that's weird to add white, but it's.

So, to quote another movie character I love, I have such sites to show you Real TIME launches in 2003.

Yes, the listener to this podcast has opened the puzzle box.

And now you will be torn asunder by hooks as you lick your lips and into the camera say Jesus wept.

And then Bill Maher will go the man in the sky.

So real time launches in 2003.

It's actually so the original version of the show is fairly different because so it it at the start there's like an opening comedy sketch, a very brief opening comedy sketch.

And then it's he comes out, he says hello.

The first episode, the crowd goes crazy.

Like for the first probably two 2 1/2 seasons, the crowd gives him like a 2 minute standing ovation every episode.

But for the 1st 10 episodes, he comes out, he's like, thanks for being here.

We're going to do this, this and this does the monologue.

And then he goes, somebody we're going to be talking to a little later, later.

But who's going to give us a sneak preview of tonight's like featured segment?

It's Paul F Tompkins.

And then you're like, wait, what?

And Paul F Tompkins is like, thanks so much, Bill.

And then he kind of previews the bit he's going to do later.

And the intention is to give Bill Maher enough time to go from where he's doing the monologue over to the desk or the spot where he's going to do the interview.

This rarely happens.

It is always awkward.

He never has enough time.

He goes too slow.

He often calls Paul F Tompkins.

He'll be like, give it up for Paul, or he'll go Paul Tompkins.

Like he seems like he forgets his name.

And then?

Wait, wait.

I just need to interject for people who don't know Paul F Tompkins.

He disgrace he is.

A disgraceful thing to not know.

I mean, he's not a disgrace.

I know his wife.

She was on the show.

I would never.

He's he's, he's one of the sort of, you know, second tier stars in Mr.

Show, which is a great show if I really recommend it, but not one of the ones who stormed the Capitol on January 6th.

Oh, they were comedy partners.

And there's AI think The Daily Beast maybe has like a comedy podcast.

And he was like, the host was like, would you like to talk about Jay Johnstone?

And Paul Tonkins was like, I very much would not like to talk about Jay Johnstone.

The guy was like, really?

And he was like, yes.

And then it just went to commercial and they came, came back and talked about something else.

But he would do like a brief, you know, story of the week monologue.

And then they would go back to the panel.

New rules would be maybe a minute.

He, he would just do 6 quick new rules.

There'd be no ending monologue.

And then at in the first episode, he was like, the other thing I think is there isn't enough great stand up comedy on TV anymore.

So we wanted to end the show with a really funny stand up comedian.

So for the 1st 10 episodes, one of them ends with a music act, the other ones end with stand up comics.

They're all Largo performers, which is like an alt venue.

Largo is like an alt venue.

All the Mr.

Show guys did Largo.

That's here in Los Angeles.

Except one episode this, the featured stand up comic is Earthquake.

And he fucking murders.

He murders so much harder than anyone else has ever murdered on Real Time, including Bill Maher.

He kills so hard.

But the first episode, the final guest is Sarah Silverman.

She finishes her set and he goes, Sarah Silverman, everybody, God, Can you believe she kisses Jimmy Kimmel's cock with that mouth?

And that's how he ends the last episode.

What the fuck?

Jesus.

What the fuck And I?

They were like friends.

Oh my God, that makes me.

So uncomfortable that makes me like, I'm sorry, I don't like I've seen or heard a bunch of stuff, but like, I don't know, like, you know, I know there's a lot of anti Arab racism in the in the mix here.

That makes me like really uncomfortable.

Like that's a that's fucking imagine saying that about a woman, you know, like in front of people.

That's fucking crazy.

Yeah, he, I cut him saying that into the opening of the film Killing Them Softly, where it's like Obama's speech intercut with like incredibly discordant strings that are very upsetting.

It works perfectly.

And that's the moment when I was, I was like, this podcast is moronic.

I shouldn't be doing this.

And then when he said that, I was like, no, I'm definitely on to something here if this is something the guy said on the first episode of his show.

But it's like the whole thing is he is uncensored.

He's like unshackled from the network TV sensors.

He doesn't have to worry about ads anymore.

Like, he's just free.

He doesn't have to worry about advertisers, no censorship.

He can say what he wants.

And like he definitely takes advantage of that like language and content wise because he is often like disgusting, like sexually disgusting in his comedy.

He.

Also has this new rule segment which is really smug.

So we have a clip of it.

This is the first new rule segment.

It's not like.

New rules and the reason why it came about is while I was off I got ever more cranky about stupid things that people were doing.

Especially when it becomes a sheep like headlong rush where lots of stupid people do the same stupid thing.

For example, new rule.

No more whining about the French.

At least they're standing up to the Bush administration, which is more than I can say for the Democrats.

And and by the way, it doesn't make me UN American to say I'd rather live in Paris than in places where cheese only comes and individually wrapped slices.

Oh no.

Can he say that?

Can he say that?

I just want to say this guy.

'S unhinged man, I just think.

That because it was the first new rule segment.

But it really does help get into sort of like his whole shtick, doesn't it?

Because it because it's always about these stupid people.

Everybody's so stupid, right?

Like everybody fucking stupid except for Bill Maher.

It that's his his contribution to culture truly is.

There are a lot of people who I think are not particularly familiar with him.

But if you were to be like, if you were to be like, yeah, I think there's like a new rule, someone you're talking to will go new rule.

Like that's his grand contribution to culture.

So the show is really gaining influence real time during these Bush years.

And I, you know, this is my own analysis, but this is what I see.

I see two things happening.

Islamophobia is really, really mainstream still, right?

It doesn't really go away after 911.

It becomes, you know, just part of the culture.

And then, of course, there's violence in the Middle East that that gives, you know, fodder for Islamophobes.

And there's, as Jared knows very well, there's this whole network of Islamophobic organizations and pundits and things that are in the United States making a whole bunch of money off of this.

So that's happening.

And that helps because he's willing to say really bigoted things about Muslims.

And then there's also this other thing, which is that fatigue over the Iraq war is growing.

And I'd like to hear, you know, your analysis of this.

But as far as I can tell, he benefits from being right about Iraq for the most part.

He starts opposing it.

You know he says things questioning Iraq in 2002.

He deserves like probably some modest amount of credit for that.

While it's true that that people were in favor of the Iraq war to a degree, it wasn't like Afghanistan stand by any means.

I remember from John, like, you know, people were starting to turn on Bush, not so much that it made a difference in the 2004 election, obviously, in which Bush routed Kerry, but he was a oh.

God.

Yeah, but but, you know, I remember being in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine, of all places, as the first bombs kind of dropped.

And we all saw it on CNN and with a few of my friends who were up there just like, you know, smoking pot, drinking beer.

I don't remember what, what, what the context was.

We were out there hanging out and we saw like all these pop up protests along the way.

Now, granted, it was New England and, you know, it's a sort of a blue area, but, you know, people were opposing this war.

It wasn't like Afghanistan, where it was very rare to see anyone opposing it.

So, you know, he does that and he he at one point calls it, you know, justification built on lies.

I'm just curious what your thoughts about that will in general.

Yes, also very quickly.

The other thing about new rules is they are often not rules like he'll be like new rule.

The woman in Minnesota who freed a bear from its cage at the zoo has to answer one question.

Did he then try to steal your picnic basket like that?

He'll do that and he finishes and you're like, that is in no way a rule that is like a question or a request.

He so he very yeah, before we go to a rock.

He was adamantly opposed to it.

He's against it wholesale.

He's like, this is horseshit.

We shouldn't do this.

These shouldn't if we did do it, these shouldn't be the guys who do it.

The and he, he has that stance the entire time.

Once America invades Iraq, he switches to, well, we should want it to work.

You know, we didn't want him to do it.

He actually has the same stance about Bush stealing the 2000 election.

He'll be like, well, he did it and it worked, so why are we still talking about it?

So he was like, you know, a rock.

Let's hope it works.

And then it gets to a point where after the Iraqi elections, he starts going, look, it looks like this thing worked.

And while Bush may have lied and got us into the war for the wrong reasons, it was the right thing to do because now we will have spread democracy.

And mixed in amidst all this, as you're saying he is, he's constantly saying stuff like, like, oh, how can we He'll be like, but do the can these people, are they even ready for democracy?

Like, do these people even do they even like, could they even handle it?

You know the average guy in Iraq, you know he'd rather Saddam be back in power then see his sister walk down the street in a miniskirt.

Which is one of my favorite things he said because it betrays the fact he did not know Saddam Hussein was like a secular dictator in the region.

It took him like 3 months to finally start correcting his guess and going well hold on, Saddam was a secular dictator.

You never know up to him and was like hey you sound like an idiot.

Yes, Yeah.

He never acknowledged that he was doing it before.

And then after the election he starts going well, now it seems like isn't there hope?

Doesn't it seem like Bush will will have been right about this and that there's hope in the region?

And if he had a the conservatives would be like, yes, exactly.

And like Ariana Huffington would be like, what the hell are you talking about?

No.

And then he'd look at the conservatives on the panel and be like, I remember when liberals used to be able to envision a better future.

And this like he would talk to somebody like Fareed Zakaria or Thomas Friedman on the one-on-one interview.

And the way he talked to them, you'd be like, oh, he reads these guys.

And that's why he thinks this is good is because both of those guys were pro Iraq war.

And for years and years and years after it was clearly a disaster.

Still tried to find ways to be like, maybe it's good, maybe it was good, maybe it wasn't.

Maybe it's turning around.

So like, it took him a while to go back to like, well, this was a disaster.

And I think he even admitted that when he was like, well, it looks like I was wrong to hold out a little hope on this one.

Well, well before we move on from this, I think that that's a very interesting framing because it sounds like he gets the advantage of being anti war by being anti war to a degree.

He also doesn't isolate the conservatives and he's sort of able to kind of straddle that and sort of seem reasonable to this, you know, amorphous center that you know, I don't even know if it exists or not, but like, you know, he he's always entertaining both of these positions all the time.

He's juggling them to make them work.

And it doesn't matter if it is not coherent.

It's not a coherent ideology because no person who was in favor, you know, who is against the Iraq war would second guess and say like, well, actually now let's let's like teach these people something.

They'll they'll, you know, teach a man to fish and he'll eat a lifetime.

I don't know the fuck.

But like, yeah, I mean, it's not consistent, right?

It's not like a like a, you know, a, a really consistent political position or a moral 1.

He would say like, well, I'm willing to grow and change, but then like if somebody corrects him on one episode the next week, he'll still be saying the same thing he just got corrected on.

Like he he still, he only changes when he wants to change.

Like he's only willing to quote and quote grow in his opinion about something.

If he makes the decision, nobody can give him information unless he wants that information and wants to absorb that information.

Moving forward to 2008, there's a Bill Maher movie that comes out religulous.

It's directed by Larry Charles.

You have in the notes here.

This is the guy who did Borat and Bruno also directed Seinfeld.

I don't want to isolate our audience, but I am not a fan of Borat or Bruno.

I just want to say just not sorry.

I only like the Ali G movie I feel like.

Over time, those movies look worse and worse.

But anyway, whatever.

If people want to come at me, I'm happy to have a conversation.

Please continue to listen to our show.

Freaking Bill.

Maher over here, huh?

Really challenging his audience's expectations and beliefs.

It's just like.

Guys, if we need to kick Mike off the podcast to save the country, that's something that we're willing to do.

I just Jared.

If I wanted to watch improv, I'd go to a local community theater.

Oh, thank you.

Well.

That's not a.

Rule will Jared, since I'm since I'm so smart and big brained, I think I should explain to you, since you didn't isolate this yourself, that religulous is a play on words that makes religion sound like the word ridiculous.

So I, you know, I just have.

To let you know about that, That's crazy.

Anyway, this move, this movie sucks ass.

It's really fucking bad.

It's one of the worst things.

It like I, I put in the notes that this was a real moron test of its era where it's like if, if if I talked to somebody and they were like, it's like, yeah, I'm going to see religulous.

Yeah, I'm going to see, I'm going to go see it actually when they, when, when, when, when they were done.

You'd be like, oh, this guy's fucking dumb as shit.

It is like you could see at the trailer that this was just Bill Maher, like going around to make religious people seem insane.

And probably, you know, subconsciously this my opinion, just adding a bunch of other religions into it so he could really focus on Islam anyway.

Yeah, it.

Was really I just.

Googled what year did Reddit launch for no reason.

It was 2005.

This movie came out in 2008.

This is feels like a very Reddit era, but it's it's it is very like it is very like, oh wow, and and like what he does in the entire thing.

And I I mean, will you want to contribute here?

But he just finds like the people he can talk down to, who can he?

He can seem smarter than.

He doesn't speak to any kind of like religious scholars or anything like that.

Yeah, first of all, don't tell me what to do.

Second, thank you for not letting me get my joke out.

Where I was going to say I thought Religulous was a combination of religion and homunculus.

I don't know where I would have gone with that.

I don't know.

I'm so glad I didn't have the chance to try to riff off of that idea earlier.

I saved you man, you should be thanking me.

Yeah, I really, yeah.

Yeah.

I appreciate you guys knew in that moment we got to keep going and not let this guy get in here.

I, I could see the gears turning in your head and I said we got to, we got to move now.

He talks to a rabbi and a mom but never in a homunculi and then we just sit there in like dead silence for 5 minutes.

So the the movie is literally him going around to religious people, but like it's but at one point he loses a debate to like some guys in a rest stop, some like truckers or something in a rest stop where he's like the, the Holy Ghost, the father, the son, what is this?

And one of the guys is like, I always just thought of it the same way.

Like, you know, he's like, how can a guy be 3 things?

And one of the guys is like, Oh, I always just thought of it like, you know, matter can be a solid, a gas or a liquid.

And then it cuts to Bill Maher in the car and he's like, whoa, I never thought of it that way.

And it's like you just lost to some guys on their break getting like uppers from a truck.

Stop.

It's funny, you are describing the person who was so excited to see this movie.

You are describing my former mother-in-law.

I saw his mother.

Former mother-in-law.

Yeah, my my first wife.

She was very, very kind.

Worse person.

I said worse.

So yeah, they were very nice.

I don't think we ever fully understood each other though.

Much better relationship with my in laws.

Now I'm older and more mature.

Let's really buckle down and get into this guy's.

Here's the thing with Deb.

So the other thing is he goes way harder on like he's getting along with everybody in the movie except for the Muslims, The Muslim, he'll be like, look, your book is calling for the deaths of people and killing and someone would be like, no, no, it's an old book.

It's just stories.

Like it's how you interpret them.

And then later he'll be like, well, of course they weren't going to admit in front of me that they believe in violence and they're violent people.

So he'll be like, you're, you believe in violence, right?

They'll go, no, not at all.

Nobody I know does.

And then it cuts to him alone, like a coward, where he's like, they were lying.

They would never admit in front of me, an outsider, that they believe in violence.

It's really like it's it is one of the worst films like that came out in my life.

Yeah, it ends with, I'm pretty sure it ends with him giving like a really sanctimonious yes.

Like he's like at some like battle site or something.

And he's like, well, he's.

He's saying this is where the Christians like, expect, like, whatever.

I don't.

Know and there's no he's and throughout Israel and throughout the sea, and there's a Bush on fire.

Yes, that's a shot.

Yeah, I'm.

Gonna play.

I'm gonna play a clip of that because people just, even if listeners don't want to hear it, I want to hear it again.

If you belong to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest.

To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travellers.

If the world does come to an end here or wherever, or if it limps into the future decimated by the effects of a religion inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was.

That we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it.

That's it.

Grow up or die.

Oh, grow up.

Also just the music too.

Yeah, it's like the trailer for Mad Max Fury Rd.

Grow UPS as a guy whose like entire brand is around like smoking weed like until he's like age, whatever.

No, there's nothing wrong with smoking weed.

There's not.

That's not my point.

It's just sort of like is that is he really gonna like come down on people for not being mature enough?

Furthermore, bigotry, misogyny.

Oh, OK, thanks, Bill.

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, oh good shit.

Like really do something about that.

Yeah, yeah.

Something you know, Bill Maher is definitely an authority on.

Uh, new rule Bill, stop signing your tweets, huh?

Yes, exactly.

I do think he's mature though because he's a 70 year old man who wears like Supreme T-shirts and owns a house next to his actual house that he calls his party house.

And he calls the basement club Random.

And that's where he has his podcast club Random, where he smokes with smokes weed with women in their 20s.

Right.

And Kid Rock.

So 2012, I think it's it's easy to reimagine Obama as this just like hurtling comet that could never be taken down.

I was in India at that time in 2012.

But I remember very distinctly thinking like he could lose at one point.

Like I felt like, you know, Romney felt like he had a legitimate shot.

The attacks on Obama were becoming pretty effective in the Tea Party movement had really shifted a lot of the political weight in the country.

I think it was obviously that was very influential on what would come right with MAGA.

And in that moment you put in the doc that he donated $1,000,000 to Obama's re election campaign.

So there's two things here.

One, wow.

And two, he had $1,000,000 to give.

Well, that's a lot of money to give to Barack Obama.

Yeah, and in the clip and they put in the doc, Piers Morgan is interviewing him on CNN about it.

And even Piers Morgan is like, you had $1,000,000 to give out.

But here's what Bill Maher says or why he gave to Obama.

And I think it it's kind of illuminating.

Because these Republicans scare me.

You know, if this was Europe and we had ten parties to choose from, maybe I'd feel different.

Yes, Obama has disappointed me in some ways.

But after watching these Republicans debate for this last year and hearing their ideas for the country, not only do I think this is for the betterment of the nation, I would do this on a selfish level.

Because if we elect a Republican and they go back to the policies that were there before Obama, I could see my money getting vaporized like it did in 2008 when I had it with Lehman Brothers.

So yes, this is an investment for Bill.

But I mean it gets him a lot of Lib cred, I mean.

Loves to complain.

Now he's like, oh, all these other talk show hosts, they have to appeal to their liberal audience and like, we all know who they're voting for.

And Johnny Carson never would have been like that.

It's like, this was a guy giving $1,000,000 to a presidential candidate and like going around giving interviews about it.

It's like really kind of egregious.

To make a comedian doesn't have to be like a journalist, right where we have certain lines like, you know, I'm publishing investigative reporting about the right, for instance, and and if I go and I simultaneously give a lot of my money to any kind of non right candidate, then it looks like it's part of a partisan operation.

The whole thing top to bottom, among other ethical issues as we've seen with.

You know, the stories that have come up recently with people you, you, you need some separation.

But he's technically should be allowed to do it.

It it's just more a question of like his show is a political talk show and he is, you know, he's making his branding $1,000,000 to Obama guy.

I don't know.

I'm about, I'm trying to make some sort of moral consistency argument, but it just, yeah, he gave $1,000,000 to Obama because he liked Obama and he thought it was better for his money overall.

Also, I don't know if I put it in the dock anywhere, but for a while he was a minority owner of the New York Mets.

So that's why.

That's Mike's eyes just lit up.

Is that actually true?

I didn't.

You're telling me now for the first time.

That's 100% true.

Damn, Mike, you you root for Bill Maher's team.

It must have been during the Wilpon years.

Is this, this is a, this is a conflict of interest of the show.

God damn it, we're going to have to scrap the whole episode.

This is difficult.

This is difficult for me.

I believe he sold them, sold them to Steve Cohen with everybody.

I.

Oh yeah.

So he's part of, he's part of the, he's part of the Wilpon Group then?

Yes, yeah, he was a minority share owner.

Yeah, there's so many pictures of him with Mr.

Met.

Jared could put together a really long slideshow to really torture you.

Of all the photos of Bill Maher with Mr.

Mitt.

The way to really torture me, though, is Gavin McGinnis in Mets gear, which is really brutal for me.

He's.

From like Montreal?

Isn't he that asshole?

Yeah, he's he's, I don't want to talk about that guy now we we have to do his another time.

But yeah, so we're looking at he does this and then he's really at the same time he's like this big liberal guy.

He is hitting Arabs and Muslims really, really hard.

Jared 2014 anti Muslim comments about ISIS that he is on the Charlie Rose show.

So yes, does ISIS do Khmer Rouge like activities where they just kill people indiscriminately who aren't just like them?

Yes.

And would most Muslim people in the world do that or condone that?

No, but most Muslim people in the world do condone violence just for what you think they do.

First of all, they say it.

They shout it from the absolutely.

There's a Pew poll of Egypt done a few years ago.

82% I think it was, said stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery.

Over 80% thought death was the appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion.

I'm sure you know these things.

I know I'm well, I do.

But I but I know that this religion.

Is like other religions.

Is just naive and plain wrong.

It is not like other religions.

So I guess the whole religulous, like all religions are bad or dumb really.

Not really I guess, right?

Other religions are not like that.

It it kind of puts religulous in a a different position, right?

Where it's like if he criticizes all religions like it's very Sam Harris esque.

Where it's like I criticize all religion but especially this one.

Yes, yes.

Well, you mentioned Sam Harris and Sam Harris happens to be on the panel with Ben Affleck when he gives his very famous kind of viral early viral push back to Bill about his anti Muslim bigotry.

The solution?

The.

Question No.

The solution is to we've killed more Muslims and they've killed us by an awful lot.

We've invaded more Muslim.

I'm not proven more killed an awful lot.

And yet somehow we're exempted from these things because they're not really a reflection of what we believe in.

We did it by accident.

That's why we invaded.

We're not.

We're.

Not convincing anybody it's.

Not specifically telling you that I disagree.

With what you think I know and we're I don't understand.

If you don't understand.

My argument Your argument is.

Like, you know, black people, you know, they show.

No, it's not an argument.

No, it's not.

It's based on facts.

I can show you a Pew poll of Egyptians.

They are not.

It's that Pew poll again.

He's really he really likes.

He loves that fucking thing.

Poor Egyptians taking so much heat on the pod lately.

Also also Bill Maher did go on Joe Rogan and say how come nobody talks about black on black crime so he does now also do what Ben Affleck metaphorically accused him of doing, just literally.

Well, I feel like that Ben Affleck moment was the first time I remember people kind of waking up to this question about Bill Maher being bigoted and like publicly because he was such a huge star and he did it and and Bill Maher seemed to be like really on his back feet kind of just nervous about it.

I don't know how you how you read that moment.

Well.

He loves celebrities, so it made him uncomfortable that Ben Affleck would be mad at him.

I think he might have bought a house from Ben Affleck at one point.

But he it, it's funny because like, Sam Harris and Bill Maher still whine about that to this day.

Like they will still bring it up and whine about it with each other.

And like, you know, Ben Affleck is not, you know, broing out with Matt Damon, being like, I can't stop thinking about the time I got into a fight with Bill Maher and Sam Harris.

That should be a show.

Well, they can't too homophobic if you've got Matt Damon on there.

But it's it it he he doesn't like he he likes disagreement, he doesn't like arguing.

And so some people he will talk to like their children, But if he views their status as being above his, it just upsets him.

And now he's kind of started doing a thing with anybody where when he's really losing and can't see any way forward, he'll just be like, well, let's just move on.

There's no point in talking about this.

I think just to just with Ana Kasparian was just on Club Random and when they're talking about Israel and Gaza, he was get got to a point where he was just like, well, let's forget it.

This is boring.

I'm bored and if I'm bored, the audience is bored.

So let's just move on.

Right.

He doesn't want to appear to be in over his head in front of the audience.

I think this is probably going to come with my summation because he needs to be considered smart, right?

It seems to be like so much part of his brand.

Complaining as all by by all the conservatives complain about this about me and most liberals that were dismissive of conservatives, the rednecks, the Tea Party, we quote, we think they're stupid and racist and I say they're stupid racist.

But then, OK, so just tell me what I'm I should do in a week like this, where the the the unparalleled leader of the party now Donald Trump unveiled a plan that is so stupid and racist.

Trumpism is rising.

It's not like he hasn't emerged as a political force quite yet, but it's in the air, right?

You know, for people who focus on the right and the far right, like Jared Knight sort of do with this on this podcast, you would, you know, things like the Daily Stormer were starting to form and then you were getting a lot of like, you know, different forums.

4 Chan was becoming a much bigger deal right around this time.

Yeah, you've got the Gamergate era.

YouTube is starting to get populated with anti social justice warrior content.

Like something really nasty is starting to brew up in the culture.

And somebody who is on those Daily Stormer forums was Dylan Roof.

Oh.

God, I thought you were going to say Bill Maher.

No, no, no.

He's, this is not that type of podcast.

But yeah, I mean, you know, Roof was on those, you know, on those extreme radical right forums and he went in and murdered 9 black parishioners at this church in South Carolina.

You highlighted Bill's response to that.

And I thought it was really interesting.

Even earlier on, like I'm watching episodes from after Katrina right now.

And at least for now, his response very much is just the Bush administration has blown this so badly.

They've abandoned these people.

And like the conservatives will come on and he'll be like, you can't, you can't seriously be defending this.

Like it's sort of the most angry he gets with his guests.

It it's feels a little bit like the way he would talk to people.

I'm politically incorrect, but in the same way with the but then by the end he would be like, but come on, we all agree and we're all friends and we want what's best, whatever.

And it it's a similar thing he does after the Charleston church shooting because you know, the episode right after he's like clearly very upset about it.

And his jokes are bad.

They're always bad.

And he's not good at being sensitive.

But when he's just talking on the panel, when they get into it, he's like, look, this guy was on the Internet and he was talking about writing things, really horrific things about black people and reading really horrific things about black people.

And he looks like this at this writer from Breitbart who is on the panel.

And he goes, your website writes a lot about black people and it writes stuff that is not so nice.

And it's a moment where you're like, wow, how nice.

It's great.

The rare show that has these kinds of fringe figures on.

And then he will just sit there and be like, hey, what about the fact that you like, couldn't like you quite possibly contributed in some way to this like mass casualty, like white supremacist mass casualty event.

And the guy is like, really on his back heels.

And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.

But then he ends up being like, well, look, you made a movie about how religion is bad.

This happened in a church.

Couldn't you also blame that a little bit?

And Bill Maher kind of is like, well, you know, you got me there.

And it's like, no, he doesn't.

He.

Doesn't got you there.

That's the stupidest fucking point.

It wasn't a religion thing.

But his his sense of his odd sense of decorum and also, you know, he's talking to a white man.

So like his sense of.

Decorum is like a woke left type when pushing back though.

He's just like lost it on other guys for way less.

But also this is like, you know, it's season 13 episode 20, which was Oh my God, it was 10 years ago.

So like it it he was at that time a different more he was a more coherent guy at the time.

You know, he was, he could be in the middle of a big like anti PC culture Jag, but then something like that happens and it's going to like sort of shake him out of it and bring him back down to reality and be like, well, it's easy to talk about the straw man in my head until something this horrific happens in real life and then he's sort of forced to confront the reality of what's going on.

Well, I would just before we move on to the next segment, remind people or inform people who don't know that Breitbart at one point had I believe, a vertical called Black Crime.

Do they still?

I don't think they did.

No, they, they took, they took it down once People were like, why is this A tag on your website?

When people were like, you do know that you have a vertical called black crime, right?

So 2016, Obama returns the favor, I think, so to speak, and sits down for an interview with him.

Tell us a little bit about that.

There was like a lot of pressure to make this happen, like from his fans.

It was like, I think they might have done a letter writing campaign, but it was very much a thing where they very vocally were like, we should it honestly, you look at it and you're like, this feels a little bit like a make a wish thing or something.

Like they were like, well, Bill Maher's really sick and it's always been his dream to interview a president because at the end of the day, this guy is like a power worshipping freak.

So like nothing is more impressive to him than being around a president.

As will come up as will come up again later.

But yeah, he he sits down with his interview for him.

That's also, I don't, I haven't seen it in a really long time, but I recall, from what I recall, it seems like Obama was way more engaged when he was talking to Marc Maron in his garage.

Then he was talking to Bill Maher as his presidency.

Well, he, well, he, he Bill Maher sort of is like, wait, aren't like atheists like a persecuted class in the US And Obama's like, no.

Yeah, I I mean, this is an audio podcast, so people can't see Obama in this clip, but I think your read of it is correct.

Will Obama kind of seems like he would rather be anywhere else.

I don't know if anybody from my tribe of atheists ever thanked you for giving us a shout out at your first inaugural, but you didn't mention non believers.

You.

I think it was more than once, more than one.

I mean, it's not just in that speech.

I've done it often.

Well, we appreciate it because we do feel like untouchables to a degree.

I mean, I don't know if you saw the latest religion survey, but almost 1/4 of the country are nuns.

I don't mean the ones who hit me on the knuckles with a ruler in Sunday school.

I mean, they put none for religion, right?

They're not.

No.

They're atheists, agnostics, or they just don't want to get up on Sunday morning.

And we have no representation in Congress.

If if our numbers were represented, there be over 100 Congress people, right, who felt that way, right?

It just seems like we are not included in the basket of diversity in America, which is odd because we are the biggest minority.

That is a bigger minority than any other minority you can name.

And these like, we should get a little more love.

I'm also a black.

I'm an atheist.

Whether there is active persecution of atheists, I think that there are certain.

Well, I, I, I, I think for a candidate.

I, I, I, I think you're right that there are certain occupations, probably most prominently politics, where there would be a bias against somebody's who's agnostic or atheist in running for office.

I think that's still true.

Outside of that arena, though, you seem to have done all right with your TV show.

I, I'm at, I don't, I don't get a sense To the extent that they're boycotting you, it's because of your other wacky ideas rather than your particular view.

He's too polite.

He's too polite.

Just like, yeah, Bill, I think you might have had some trouble in your career for all the other shit you did.

Just like the background being like, Yep, uh huh.

Yep.

Like, come on, man.

Just this is this is classic.

This is how this guy is an as an interviewer, you just had these moments where you're like, can you just ask the goddamn question already?

Who are you?

Well, I know who you're trying to impress.

You're trying to impress the cool president of the United States.

But like, just like wandering around in an open field of descriptors and it's like, buddy, leave the Meadow and ask the fucking question already.

Well, I, I find it telling that he has this like one opportunity to speak in front of a president and he uses it just to basically remind people of his personal branding, right?

It's like all the problems that are in the world and everything that's going on that you could draw attention to in that moment.

It just sort of like, by the way, you may not know this, but I'm an atheist.

And it's like, oh, I do actually.

Thank you.

Yeah, he's talking to the country's first and so far only black president.

And it's like, you know, I'm a bit of a minority myself.

And it's like, and Obama just has no fucking idea what to do with that.

Yeah, he might as well might as well just sit down and be like.

So, Mr.

President, you probably know I get a lot of like young trim, you know, I pretty good for myself and Obama's just like, is there a question?

Yeah.

Let's talk about this one, Jared, because I think this is one we both were aware of at the time from our work, which is in February 2017.

He rather inexplicably, and I say inexplicably is because it's like who, Warren?

Who would demand this?

Who would ask for this had Milo Yiannopoulos on his show?

And he, Yiannopoulos said.

You're the only good one in reference to liberals.

No, you're correct about that.

So I don't know that's.

Very all I care.

About.

All I care about is free speech and free expression.

I want people to be able to be, do and say anything these days.

You're right, that's a conservative.

I care about the environment and living also and but free speech.

Living.

But I mean, you're right.

I mean, you know, we've both.

Have a position now.

We have both been disbarred at Berkeley.

You know, I I would, I gave the commencement.

Much more dramatically, I just like to say, I mean, they just, they just disinvited you.

I had riots.

People got people, people got.

Beaten up.

Right.

No, you do.

Horrendous.

OK, you win, babe.

You, you, you beat me out there.

There were no riots.

It's not a competition.

You know, it's not a competition, but.

But like when you make liberals crazy, Yes, for that part of liberalism that has gone off the deep end.

Most of it.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know.

You're the only good one.

No, I.

You're literally the only good one.

I am so.

Side has gone insane.

The Democrats are the party of Lena Dunham.

These people are mental, hideous people.

The more that America sees of Lena Dunham, the fewer, you know, votes the Democrat Party is ever going to get.

This is the people that should.

Let's not pick on fellow HBO stars.

OK, I just, I, I think it's a very important to slow this down for a second because for people who don't know Yiannopoulos and like what he was it with the time that he went into this interview, why people in Berkeley set fires and why there was rioting.

He's like one of the faces in America of like rising white supremacy in America.

And I would say like he's most high profile media thing was triggering a racist troll storm against Leslie Jones, actress Leslie Jones, in which people like defaced her website and put pictures of chimps and, and gorillas and stuff like that and repeatedly sent that and, and, and, and, you know, just, it was a constant wave so bad that she had to shut down her social media site and go dark for a while.

I mean, she was really trumpetized.

It was like it was, it was a troll storm unlike almost any that anyone's experienced.

And he did that because she was a black woman.

The end.

Who didn't like Trump?

The end.

And also when he worked at Breitbart, he was one of the main people at that publication that laundered the, you know, what was calling itself the Alt right into quote UN quote respectable, if you would even call Breitbart that conservative media because Breitbart was also at the top of its game.

You barely hear about Breitbart now, but it was, you know, full-fledged operation.

These guys know how to work him so so well.

Steve Bannon is was on the show 1 time as well and it just was like these guys just talk circles around him.

And because he thinks his job is primarily to be a good host, he'll just like let them.

Like he'll just sit there.

He won't, he won't ever throw the hammer down and just be like no, no, no, no, no.

Stop and get them to stop.

They keep talking.

He'll stop interjecting and just let them go as long as they want.

And Bannon is a smart guy, for example, who knows how to manipulate really well.

And I would I, you know, I just from my, my experience knowing both of them as personalities, Bannon's a lot smarter and savvier than Bill Maher.

And that puts him, you know, if you get a guy who can really fall for flattery, there you go.

I mean, it seems like all you have to do with Bill is just be like you are liberal and he's like, thank God, yes, thank you.

Say that, say that again that I'm liberal, and then just be like, but you're so reasonable and cool.

Yeah, if you go, I'm not, you're liberal, I'm not liberal, but I think you're great.

He'll be like, yeah, and I think you're great, too.

It's like a Pavlovian response.

That's all you have to do.

And he's like, yeah, we can all get along.

There's no reason to fight.

Also in 2017, Bill does that thing where when, you know, you know, when Trump comes in into the office again, everybody feels like they can get loose and start saying all kinds of things.

Well, he's on air and he's speaking to Ben Sasse and he airs out the N word.

And like he he actually really airs it out.

He actually says the word, you know, the whole thing.

Yeah.

And he says it in the context of a house N right, as opposed to being a field worker, because Ben Sasse is you can do you want me to come and work in the fields?

He says I can't do that.

I'm a house blank.

This gets him a lot of negative attention from black people.

There's a lot in general.

I I your take will I cut a little clip of Charlemagne the gods response, you know, in the immediate aftermath, which I thought was kind of interesting.

He he ate so much shit over this.

Like I think he had Ice cube on his show right afterwards to really like give it to him.

Killer Mike I don't remember.

Killer Mike is like a friend of his.

I don't know if he was on the show or if he just did media rounds.

Being like that was unbelievably stupid and bad.

What he did and said.

It's the most sorry he's ever seemed since Howard Stern had him on his radio show after 911, after the his 911 comments.

And Howard Stern, Robin and for some reason Stephen Baldwin, who called in all gave it to Bill Maher really hard over his like just like gave him a public humiliation ritual over the radio on the radio.

And like, I'll say the difference there is that one.

It was like they're going a little overboard.

The N word thing.

It's like it's crazy.

It's crazy that he kept his job.

This is the only thing he's ever done on real time where it seems like there was a real shot at him losing his job over it.

And you can tell how it affected him because he won't talk about it.

There have been interviewers in like magazines and stuff who have said and when I brought it up to him he said he wasn't interested in talking about it.

So here's Charlemagne the God talking about talking about what he did in the immediate after sugar.

Honey iced tea would a chuckle.

The reason I chuckled because I actually thought that the joke had great timing and he actually used it in the proper context #2I chuckled because I knew as soon as those words left his lips that this one isn't going in well for him.

Number 3A white person can never use the N word in any context.

I also chuckled because that was a rookie mistake.

I don't expect that from a veteran Caucasian like Bill Maher.

Bill Maher is 61 years old.

So a a veteran Caucasian.

I like that though.

I like that as they take it it it is true though?

Like he, he knew that.

I think that the reason why that's sort of interesting to me is because he points out that Bill would have known what he was doing when he did it.

So Wayne Brady actually in 2012?

I forgot about this until just now.

Wayne Brady in 2012 was kind of like in Omen that this could be coming down down the hill because Wayne Brady was on Aisha Tyler's podcast Girl on Guy and talking about how Bill Maher would use him.

I think it was during the debates and Bill Maher was like, you know, we want, you know, we want Obama during the debates to be like a, a brother, brother or like we don't want him to be like Wayne Brady or something like that.

And Wayne Brady was extremely mad about that and says like, oh, OK, I've got the quote.

He said just because you fuck black hookers, just because you had that particular black experience, I have to stop myself getting into it because I realized the things as if I had gone on a show or even doing it online, I'm not going to win.

Because as soon as you back off, he still has his platform to say whatever he wants.

So like, Wayne Brady, they're kind of implying like, listen, I know you think you're like, down and that black people are down with you.

But like, you're crossing a line talking this way.

And looking back at having looked back at this since I've been doing the podcast, I was like, oh, this was like the warning shot Bill Maher fired that eventually led to him sitting in his chair on television talking to a white senator from Nebraska and going, you know what?

I can just say the N word on television.

Ben Sauce being actually the whitest senator.

So, yeah.

And Ben, Ben Sasse, yeah.

I mean, that guy, that guy rockets into space when Bill Maher says that to him, he is.

He is on the moon.

He is.

So just like I, I don't want to be here.

I don't know.

What to do?

No, his I'm.

Surprised the headlines weren't Bill Maher says the N word.

And then right under that Senator Ben Sasse, dead of suicide in 2017.

He.

He.

Shit out of diamond as soon as he got out of the office trade.

But let's let's keep this moving along.

I want to talk about what what I I framed this and you see, you know, you can I disagree, but so many of these biographies take a turn around COVID around 2020.

It's just so important to see because the culture shifts in such a radical way at that time.

And so the post COVID era is the last era we're going to talk about with Bill Maher.

Go ahead, Jared.

COVID is a time where a lot more liberals left as they begin to start questioning Bill Maher and his popularity.

You're also seeing a lot of guys in the replies of his Facebook post saying, Sir, I'm a Trump supporter and you're the only liberal I like.

So will give us an overview of what's this is the era that you focus on I think the most on your show is like, you know, he expands in a big way.

He gets a podcast, there's all kinds of things happening.

Tell me a little bit about what happens to Bill post 2020.

My sort of armchair diagnosis is that he resents the year and a half of his life he lost to COVID because he is terrified to die.

He talks about it a lot, how afraid he is to die and how he wants to try to live as long as possible.

He really hopes that the singularity will happen so that his he's like, you know, as long as my brain and my Dick can be kept alive, I'll be happy.

That's like a an almost direct quote from him.

And I think he resented that.

And I don't know.

So right after Trump gets elected, he is full on Russiagate.

Like I'm with the resistance.

You know, I bet you 1000 rubles Trump won't make it to the end of his term.

And I think I, I don't know specifically what it was, but yeah, COVID radicalizes him.

I think he resents using the year of his life.

I I think it's like shared, like you said, people are starting to be like this shit sucks.

Like I really started in there were billboards up around Los Angeles and I noticed early, pretty early on, he would, one of his big things is he'd anything he didn't like.

That was why the Democrats lose.

Like any of his personal grievances, he'd go on TV and go, the Democrats lose because of this specific thing I don't like in culture that I can kind of vaguely tie to the Democrats.

And then he put it, started putting up billboard to be like, real time Bill Maher, not a safe.

There are no safe spaces here.

And it's like, well, that's the safest space there is.

Like, I began to resent how unbelievably proud of himself he was.

And it's just like he once once it was legal to be gay and get married, he was out of transgressive things cause weed was on the path to at least getting, you know, legalized in most states medically.

We never mentioned that, but that is a bit I I, I briefly mentioned something about smoking weed.

It's like, that's a big.

Part of this, that's his thing.

Yeah, that's a big part of his branding and good for him.

Yeah, he loves, loves to smoke.

He loves to be like fat people in the disgusting things they put in their body.

Like just like pound like like 4 ounces of weed in like 1 single sitting.

What kind of what kind of weed do we think Bill Maher likes to smoke?

You think he's more of an indica or sativa guy?

What is it?

What's the kind that makes you slur your words?

Forget what you're saying, make a ton of noise as you.

For for me, that's all weed.

I I don't smoke weed so anytime I do I'm like.

Yeah, whatever type of weed makes you as bad of a podcast host as humanly possible, that's the one he's smoking.

Right, right.

Yeah.

I mean, I indica for me, but not while I'm on the air.

Yeah, it it's so he's got at that point he's got nothing left.

And it is like a thing he likes to say a lot.

I didn't change the left change.

I'm not bad.

They got bad.

They're out of control.

They're crazy.

And he did get worse.

He did change.

He did get worse.

But it is also like, yeah, people continue to want more progress.

And I don't know what wall he hit where now he all progress is bad.

He's really into the idea.

It's true.

He's like people can't say things are good.

It's he calls it progressive phobia.

He also is always complaining he'll that people put a modern lens on figures of the past.

Like he'll be like, oh, of course we judge, you know, like he's one of those guys.

He's like a a Christopher Columbus defender.

I don't know if it's that specifically, but spiritually he is he'll and all those things, though I'm trying to make sure I'm not jumping ahead, but like, it really is like trans people are the one thing he has never, people can't really find a time when he was pro trans rights.

And so it seems like that is also maybe one of the big things that has radicalized him into genuinely becoming like a deeply, deeply socially conservative person.

And then what came with that is also fiscally conservative politics 'cause now he's always ragging on socialism.

He hates socialism.

Five years ago he was like, this country needs socialism.

He loved Bernie Sanders.

I pulled a clip of one of his mom Donnie rants for for later, but I think you highlighted this and I went and got the clip.

His conversation with Jon Levitt love Lovett is I was confused with like the other Jon Lovett.

Isn't there like, a comedian?

Jon Lovett's OK?

And then there's also Jon Favreau.

And Jon, it's it's.

I believe the Chapo trap house calls on the the pod Johns.

The pod Johns, Yeah.

Yeah, OK.

I don't know.

I can't differentiate one from the other, and if any of there's any cross population between listeners of that and our show, we welcome you and we have no contempt for these hosts.

Yeah, I just don't know his name.

I'll say if you are a listener of both of this show and their shows and you subscribe to the I Hate Bill Maher Patreon, you can, if you'd like, skip the episode about Bill Maher on Jon Lovitz podcast.

Perfect.

So he's yeah, he he's, you know, he gets Lovett is kind of like pushing him on the trans issues and he gets kind of mad at him and just ends the interview.

As many naughty questions, the least bad answer and the least bad answer to not is.

Not that the government decide from above, it's just to leave it up to people and parents and the kids and the doctors.

Right?

You want the government to ban gender affirming care for kids?

You want you want to lose every election, just keep coming down on the side of parents coming in second and a who gets to decide what goes on with.

My kid content, I'm not.

First of all, I'm not talking about winning or losing.

I agree.

I agree with all that, but I'm just talking about the issue itself.

What did that card say?

Can I take this one home?

As a as a sure, As a souvenir?

I'm going to put it in my scrapbook.

He's playing the cue cards to make about that.

Yeah, so.

So he kind of pitched it surround with the cue cards for a little bit, and then he's like, all right, this is good and love.

It's just like, so you're leaving and he's like, Yep.

And the interview just stops.

Yeah, he won't answer the question.

He is a he is a, he's a coward.

Like he's, he knows people will get angry with him if he says what he believes, which is that he doesn't believe that being trans is real.

And he's gone all the way to now.

He'll where he'll be like, oh, the woke left who believes crazy things like there should be penises in women's change rooms, like the kinds of things where if you.

Confronted, but just indistinguishable from like the Daily Wire.

Yes, yeah, it he really loves.

He loves Barry Weiss and so he is a devout.

He's clearly a devout Free Press reader, but don't roll your eyes.

She is a hero in journalism, hey.

That put some respect on that name.

That's the editor in chief of CBS News.

She just, she just landed a huge interview.

Did you see she got Erica Kirk, who's done, who's done like 73 media appearances this week, got a big one.

Hey, if you want your national news program to get about as much viewers as a mid sized news blog, she is she is the person for you.

It's he he won't, he can't be honest about it.

At one point, he genuinely during that interview, he he's like, you know, some of it is a social contagion.

He accuses teachers of grooming students.

And Jon Lovett is like, well, that, but that, you know, that's what they said about gay people, right?

And I found out actually this.

Is a big part of it, yeah.

Yeah, my, my guest on the show on that episode, Ella Dawson actually told me that Jon Lovett has either a trans male or like a trans mask partner.

So I think that's he's he's really gotten into like trans issues over the last few years, like in particular.

And at one point he's like, that's what they used to say about gay people, though.

And then Bill Maher is like, no, listen, he keeps getting mad at him for like interrupting him.

Even when he doesn't interrupt him.

He's like, you look like you're about to interrupt me.

But he's he's like, no, it's like, you know, the thing where, you know, the FBI would find like depressed Muslim men and then pretend to be a woman and convince them to do to do terrorism.

And then before they did the terrorism, the FBI would arrest them.

It's like that.

And Jon Levitt goes, yes, right.

You're saying being trans is like being recruited into al Qaeda.

And Bill Maher's like, well, that's very glib thing to say.

And it's like, yeah, but you did do that.

You didn't.

Said that.

You said it's very.

Glib when you take my words and then spit them back to me like.

Literally one of those guys who's like, how dare you summarize what I've said and repeat it back to me more concisely.

And it there's and there's no, there's genuinely no rhyme or reason because he talks about trans stuff and it's like it's clearly bad.

You know, he has all these crazy ideas about like weight and health, but then or about like vaccines and masks and shit.

And he'll be like, don't tell me about the science, OK?

We don't know anything about the human body, which I'm always like, my wife and I did IVF.

We know a lot about the human body.

You would be blown away by the intricacies of the human body we know about.

But then he'll say that.

But then he'll be like ripping on fat people and he'll be like, it's just science, OK?

We know these things about the human body and it's like this guy is just making it up as he goes.

Which is the stuff he doesn't like.

And then and then and his and that kind of worldview, there's like no fat chicks worldview is something that is frozen in the 1980s or whatever.

When he was first doing comedy.

You know, we can we can get to it later.

But he gets really upset when people say, do you know this?

Hey, you're the like get off my lawn guy, right?

He really takes offense to that when people pointed out.

So a lot of clips you might see these days of Bill Maher making crazy comments like this or, or, you know, just filling himself in front of his.

His guests are on a podcast he started in March 2022 called Club Random.

What a shitty name for a podcast.

Club Random?

You got to be fucking kidding me.

No effort there will tell me about Club Random.

Well, Jared, I'm afraid that I can't fully tell you about Club Random because no man or woman or person has enough time on this earth to fully tell you about Club Random.

Club Random is something you would read about in the Bible and then run to your parents crying and upset and they would go.

These are just stories that are meant to teach you about life.

They're not real.

You don't have to actually worry about them.

Grow up, Grow up is what they would say.

Club Random Yeah was a podcast he started and it's him in his basement.

It's sad now they've settled into he sits there and he smokes weed, drinks, smokes cigars with his guest in the basement of his party house, which as I mentioned is the 2nd house he owns next to his actual house.

And it's sad now because it's always set up where it's two chairs with like a table in between them.

And he says that he has crew that worked on the Bachelor as the like production staff on it because there are there are cameras in the walls.

So it'll be it usually it's front on the two people talking, but then it'll cut to an angle that's like diagonal down where you're getting like the back left part of Kid Rock's head and most of Bill Maher's face.

But a part of Kid Rock's head is like blocking Bill Maher's face.

Also, he's always mixing drinks.

So like he'll be talking and then you just hear like metal and ice clinking around like it sounds like they.

Ice is a big part of it.

It's just a lot of like rustling for ice, like.

It's like ASMR it's it's like 1 camera cuts and you just hear like every drop of saliva on the end of his like shitty rolled joint like.

He and what's sad though is for the first few months they were really experimental with the camera angles and setup.

So sometimes it'd be him at the his bar.

It's him at his bar with like Greg Gutfeld.

And because of that there is no angle they have where they are both in frame.

So it could be one of those really bad movies with a movie star who's washed up and refuses to be on set for anything other than their close-ups.

So it could theoretically just be body double S with dialogue overdubbed, but.

It's the lighting is insane.

It's like fluorescent.

It's all it's sometimes it's lit from behind with like a neon bar sign the IT.

Feels very pink, like my my room that I'm always like the people will know who they've been on the show.

I have a very like mood lighting to keep my brain normal but it's like that except like the set it's very pink and and and a little garish.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's streamer lighting, but without the like frontal light.

So it's just lit from behind the guests and and he sits there.

Some episodes are like 2 hours and 45 minutes long and the guests he has on are celebrities.

Far right figures and men with horrific accusations of intimate partner violence against them.

Thank you for.

Bringing that up because I was, I was going to move you there next.

Yeah, it's a yeah.

Guys who abuse women who he wants to help launder their reputation.

Like those are the people he has on.

Those are the three types of guests he has on Club Random.

Yeah, one that you pulled, Mike, is Terrence Howard.

Actually don't know too much about this guy.

Why?

Why?

Why'd you pull this one?

Well, I pulled it.

I pulled it because because Will said Will told us that.

Who is fucking insane?

He wrote in the doc.

He's invented a new.

Math.

A new math where 1 * 1 = 2.

Yeah, so Terrence Howard, for people who don't know, have been, have been, have been accused of domestic violence multiple times and very serious, actually.

And he, you know, it's really weird podcast from what I could see.

I didn't watch the whole thing, but I found it like just surreal.

I couldn't turn it off.

At one point he says that you shouldn't jail guys because who kill other guys over women because we're basically 98% chimp.

There's only 1.3% differentiation between us and them and that one point, 3% we call human and we have to abide by that.

But 98.7% of us is still trying to be that gorilla 8 That's who we are.

We are.

So how are they locking?

People up for killing someone that's sleeping with their wife when 98% of them is that what you can't do that to the chimpanzees.

All males fight over women in every species I know.

But again, it's going to be harder in your life because married chicks are still going to like look at you and go on their pass.

Yes, correct.

And you too.

You still get it.

So please, please, it's, it's not a fair fight and.

OK.

All right, Bill.

OK, so like, to me, I just want to say in that in that small clip alone, Will and I want to know what you think of this.

That is more than just, OK, let's give Terrence Howard a platform.

We don't believe in cancel culture.

That is like, it's like, you know, I'm going to agree with him about his psychedelic chimp fantasies.

Like, it's like, it's like, he's like, really like, he's like, he's like, he's like, this is my guy right here.

He also is like at one point he goes he's like they're they both agree his kids, Terrence Howard's kids shouldn't get the vaccines because they don't need them and insurance.

Howard is like the whole thing with the vaccine is before when they use the duck embryo for it, because they would grow vaccines and duck embryos.

He was like they would that and then when they gave you the vaccine, it wouldn't, it had nothing to connect with your DNA.

So nothing would have.

But now because they have the abortion clinics and they use, they use aborted fetal fetuses to to, you know, deliver the vaccines, now you get it.

And because it's human, it bonds.

It can bond and change your DNA.

And that's why we have the psoriasis now.

That's not where I thought that was going to go.

It's so funny I the fact that he ends with you're like listening and you're like, that's why we have what what is it going to be?

And when he says psoriasis you're like huh, I understand psoriasis is annoying but like if it's psoriasis or giving my child measles, I'll just get psoriasis.

So just, you know, you have in here generally that he's just railing against woke all the time.

In our opening clip, we had him talking about woke to RFK Junior, who is releasing his harvest, who knows where these days.

It doesn't sound like Olivia Nuzzy anymore.

And you know, he had Marjorie Taylor Green on and you mentioned that, you know, she said like AI.

He something about AI being programmed by woke.

Yeah, he everything is woke, everything he'll he's said multiple times he'll be like talking about he'll be like and yes, some of these people have the woke mind virus, which yes, is a real thing.

And it's like OK, no, it's not like it's not it metaphorically, OK, but it's not a no one actually thinks it's a virus in your brain.

But he, yeah, he talks like that all the time and he's really hung up on AI.

He so he hates AI because he believes all the AI hype.

He always says stuff like AI is already smarter than we are.

Who knows what AI can do.

He'll be like, maybe we can live forever because of AI.

Have you seen that video?

It's like the robot that in like I think China that like starts like they're like repairing it in a factory or in a like a warehouse and starts like wigging out, like flipping out and like flailing its limbs around.

And he'll be like, look, the robots are fighting back.

But his thing whole thing with AI, he's like, you know, AI, yes, you know, there are problems.

And one of the problems is that it was programmed by the woke.

And I can tell this, I swear to God this is true.

He said this.

He goes and I can tell this because somebody, he's always saying somebody did things.

He's like, somebody showed me this, somebody did this.

It it feels a little bit like he wanted, like the way Todd Glass has talked about all the jokes he did over a stand up career where he'd talk about things he did with his girlfriend and now he's out of the closet.

He's like, yeah, those stories were true.

It just wasn't a girlfriend who was with me during those things.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like he's asking AI what he asked.

He clearly asked Like ChatGPT.

What's my best stand up special?

And it told him it was one of his old ones from 2005 because I'm sure the algorithm combed letterbox, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and was like, well, this one has the highest review score combined, so that must be the best one.

And he goes, that's how I know it was programmed by woke.

First of all, it shouldn't even have an opinion on this.

It shouldn't be answering this question question.

It shouldn't have an opinion.

It's like, well, you asked it, what are you talking about?

And then he goes and I can tell it's woke because that special, there are all kinds of jokes about George W Bush and gay marriage.

And so of course the woke love that, whereas my new specials are much better, but they have jokes criticizing the woke.

So that's why AI doesn't like it.

And I can tell you his newer specials have some of the most scathing reviews from people who open the reviews by going.

I am a huge fan of this guy.

I watch his TV show every week.

This is the worst comedy special I've ever seen.

You know, you know, though what I have to say about the AI thing?

Well, sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

And my man, my man may be a little forward thinking.

He's into the AII.

Just want to point out when he had Marjorie Taylor Green on as well.

I just made a little note of this.

He let her air out her comments about a national divorce without much pushback.

When it's just like really the most offensive thing, You know, the, the, the mainstream liberal press really focuses a lot on the Jewish space lasers thing, which is kind of cartoonish and you know.

She also denies saying that.

And he goes, oh, great.

Of course they he's like, yeah, of course you didn't.

The press lies about everybody.

And it's like, yeah.

My gosh, She she said Rothschild.

I didn't even know Rothschild was Jewish or whatever.

It's like, OK, well, we were dealing with a complete moron or someone's lying to my face.

And actually, both could be true.

Yeah.

And they're both bad.

I mean, but he she talks about like, go you the national divorce.

She's like, yeah.

And he's just like, how would that work?

Isn't Atlanta in a in a state that's kind of purple and it's kind of blue there?

Like he doesn't.

She's talking about civil war, in which Americans start killing one and over another in a power struggle.

Bill.

But he doesn't seem to be bothered by that.

I believe that episode he, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I believe also on that interview episode, his one-on-one interview was with that guy who just put out a documentary about FUF OS.

And at the start of it, Bill Maher is like, so before people used to go be like, we are a little nutty.

If you believe this is true, I would say now with all this evidence, you're a little nutty if you don't believe it's true.

And then they proceed to have this interview about this documentary about UFOs beginning from the place of obviously this is all true.

UFOs are real.

They can defy the laws of physics.

Everyone who says they've seen a sighting, one of one is telling the truth.

No one would have any reason to lie.

And it gets so crazy that at one point he goes, so some people in your movie have a theory that aliens are intentionally crashing spacecraft for us to find so that we can reverse engineer the technology and learn from it.

What are some cases of technology that might have come from that?

This is the hard hitting, rational stuff you would expect.

Yeah, this guy sounds.

Really religious.

This guy sounds really great.

The same guy, The same guy who told us that we're all fucking idiots if we go to Mass.

It turns out there is a man in the sky with a beard, but he's also extremely tall and grey and thin and he's crashing his car on purpose so that we can invent like submarines or whatever.

Like, it's he.

It's absolute crackpot shit on the most highly regarded station network or cable.

It airs every week.

It's been on for 23 seasons and if you have any sense and you watch it, you'll be like, it feels like a weird form of gas lighting where you're like, well, this has been on so long.

I must there must be something wrong with me for watching this and go all of these.

There's a gas leak in this studio or something.

What the hell is going on right now?

Well, you, you put together a bunch of like like a like a super cut of him saying things like for, for a podcast hosted by Matt Bernstein.

Is that his name?

Yes, yes, it's fruity.

I unfortunately deleted all that stuff because I was like surely no one else would be mad enough to ask me to do this again.

Well, well, we can.

We can, we can sample Matt's work here if you just want to hear a little clip clip of him, you know, saying the same thing over and over again for a minute.

And you wonder why the left catches more jokes from me.

They changed, not me, OK?

I mean, they left me.

I didn't leave them.

I mean, I I'm I'm the same.

It's not me who changed.

Yeah, I feel I'm the same guy.

Yeah, I didn't change.

The left changed is is a it's like an honest to God.

That's his mantra.

And then a thing he also says all the time is he goes.

I tell my woke friends we both voted for the same person.

You're just.

Like when Young Jeezy says that's right or whatever, it's like a refrain that that they just like, throw out.

Like as an adlet.

Yeah, DJ Clue.

Yeah, yeah, new shit, new shit.

He also the other thing, though, about his whole I tell my woke friends you're just why she lost.

He also said in 2022 that the Democrats were going to get killed in the midterm because of wokeness.

And I'm going on paternity leave for January, but when I come back.

I'm going to watch.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

While unfortunately I I don't know if you've met my wife, but it turns out my baby is going to be 1/4 woke.

I found out my I found out my yeah, my wife.

My wife is half, she's half woke on her dad's side and she's 1/4 DEI on her mom's side so.

My God dude, your kid has no chance of defeating the Republicans now.

Yeah, no, she's going to cost the Democrats so many seats in the next election.

Very much a critique, a critic of what goes on on the fringe of the left.

I mean, woke culture has just.

That's one reason why the Republicans are going to do so well in this election, because the left has gone super crazy with lots of shit that the average American just never voted for, doesn't recognize in this country, doesn't want and pay attention to, and doesn't.

OK, so we're moving along in this code post COVID era.

He's wrong about the midterms and of course then October 7th, right?

Not not a great moment for for anyone.

And as Israel starts to retaliate and launch operations into Gaza and it becomes apparent that it is a genocide, he engages in a lot of genocide denial.

Yeah, so Bill Maher's always been a Israel hawk.

When he went on Larry King in 2001, basically said Israel has never done anything wrong and that everything would be fine in the Middle East if people would just stop attacking Israel.

And this has come up a lot since October 7th.

He's been Wheeling this line out a bunch, so there's a moment that we have here in the Dock the second time Ben Shapiro is on Club Random.

The second time.

The second time.

The second time, Ben Shapiro is on Club Random.

Thank you every time you.

Slow that down running back.

Like every time you see Ben Shapiro, you're like, God, I hope I get a second shot at this guy 'cause there's just so much good stuff here.

There's just so much we didn't get into while it blew weed smoke in your face for 2 1/2 hours.

Anyway, they're mocking the New York Times for writing a story about the IDF using kidnapped Palestinians as human Shields when they think there's improvised explosive devices around.

Dismissing the idea that a war crime is real, he wheels it out.

To be realistic about the larger parameters here, what does a nation do when it is being attacked?

You know, I keep saying this is all very simple, stop attacking Israel, stop attacking Israel, and then we won't be having these fights about when should we have a ceasefire, which is always the day after Israel attacks, right?

That's.

Right.

There's never a better time for a ceasefire in an Israeli war than the day after.

I thought it was just, yeah, that's right, Ben Shapiro says to Bill Maher, the liberal pundit.

That's definitely right.

There's nothing more complicated going on than that.

Also special guest appearance by the ice clinking around in his glass during that clip.

We weren't talking about that.

Dude, after you said that, now we're playing these clips and I'm just hearing people's mouths smacking and like.

Oh, that's coming.

Dude, these these producers.

Will Will has left us a a delightful super cut.

Of my lip pervert.

My pervert shit.

Yeah, he may have hired producers for The Bachelor, but I'm convinced that they hate him.

Oh, there's some I, I keep mentioning the Bella Thorne episode.

If you watch that episode, it's like the third episode of the podcast.

If you watch that, you'd be like, why would anyone ever put this out?

Like, why would you not go to your boss and go, we can't release this.

You grab her at various points during the interview like this is not acceptable.

I I start to wonder if it's like and at one point while he's like grabbing her hand, the camera zooms in on it as if they're like hit the prosecutor that like prosecution team in court against him.

But I sometimes wonder now if club random if he isn't paying a ton of money for this show and this is not a form of like elder abuse being done to him like sincerely.

Well, well, we're gonna get to the to the stuff with women in a second.

And he had Bill Burr on.

I mean, like they've had a sort of back and forth I think for a while.

So, I mean, a lot of people played it up like Bill Burr destroyed him.

But it seems like they have a fairly friendly connection, unless I'm misunderstanding it.

Like they've been on each other's shows a bunch.

Yeah, so when Bill Burr was on Club Random and Bill Maher tried to whip out that thing that Ben Shapiro was like, mm, hmm.

Yep, Yep.

Just stop attacking Israel.

That's it.

That's the whole that's the whole thing going on in the Middle East.

He pushed back on it, kind of mocked him.

This went around it went, you know, semi viral online as like Bill Burr decimates Bill Maher Bill on Bill violence.

But but like you said, like they they seem to have, you know, at least some kind of cordial relationship at the end of this podcast, Bill Burr is like, Oh yeah, I had a great time.

Thanks for having me on.

But here's that clip.

Very.

Simple solution to all this problem in the Middle East.

Stop attacking Israel.

Hey, you're just attacking Israel.

You just solved it.

I actually did go.

That's fantastic.

I'm the one who's actually brave on this.

Yourself on the back.

Let's go to Russia and the Ukraine.

How do you solve that one, Bill?

This is why this is not yours.

Makes some hard noise.

It's not your thing, it's what you might.

It isn't.

Yes, it isn't.

You're like that guy that has a fantasy football team and thinks he's a fucking GM.

Like why am I?

He's talking about Mike right there.

That's that's a shout out to Mike.

This is literally true.

But I mean that that's why you pay him the big bucks.

That was a really good lion.

And it's actually very true too.

Is that like Bill is like really smelling his own farts on like a lot of these foreign policy issues?

The thing where he's saying I am brave is because Bill Burr saying like, look, I'm with the kids.

Like it's bad that kids are dying.

And Bill Maher is like, oh, it's so easy to say that.

It's so easy to say that.

And so Bill Burr is.

Like, oh wow, it is easy to say that if you have a heart, yes.

Bill Burr's like, oh wow, what a hero.

He's like, I am a hero like I am.

It is brave to say that.

And he gets into the like, Bill Burr's like, no, Hamas, I'm not.

I'm with the kids because they don't the Palestinian Diane, Bill Maher does a thing of like, well, what's the difference between Hamas and the Palestinians, really?

So here's the thing.

We're talking about this clip, the Ben Shapiro clip.

Ben, the Ben Shapiro episode is from after the Bill Burr episode of Club Random, because Ben Shapiro on that episode says to Bill Maher, you know, I thought Bill Burr was a real asshole when he was on your show before.

Ben Shapiro keeps trying to start beef with Bill Burr and Bill Burr is smart enough to know like, why would I engage in this?

Like why would I give this guy?

Attention and like boost his credibility but like Ben Shapiro whines about Bill Burr on the show and Bill Maher does this thing where he's like no no, we have this professor this dynamic where Oh my sort of bait him and I let him be like oh oh you know he gets mad he's like oh you think you're so smart you think you're so smart I'm kind of like oh Bill yes, come and get me like he acts like this is all him.

I'm the floor general baiting I'm Sun Tzu baiting my my enemies into coming at me and doing exactly what I want but on the episode of club random Bill Maher is like fucked up by the end.

He is insanely wasted and Bill Burr was on club random like years before and they had an OK time.

And then Bill Burr came on the Thursday afternoon podcast, which is Bill Burr's other like second podcast after the Monday morning one.

And Bill Maher is so standoffish and hostile for most of it until finally Bill Burr is being like friendly.

He's asking him questions about what stand up was like when he was young.

Bill Maher keeps getting mad and taking offense that Bill, he's like, oh, stop acting like I'm so much older than you.

It's only 13 years, an objectively large amount of years.

And by the end they're kind of joking around a little bit and they're having an OK time.

And that's when they're like, you know, Bill Burr's like, I, I had a blast, by the way, 'cause Bill Burr's been like breaking his balls.

But at the end, he's kind of being like, hey, I'm being friendly.

And Bill Maher's like warmed up.

He's uncrossed his arms.

He's like, I had a great time.

I don't fully remember, 'cause I'm just going to watch this again for the show, like over the weekend.

I haven't seen it for like a year and a half.

I recall by the end Bill Burr not being as enthusiastic about Bill Maher as he was at the end of his podcast.

So I wouldn't be surprised if these two guys have not talked by the end because he is like authentically annoyed by him sitting there and being like, here's how you solve the war.

Like Bill Burr's the kind of guy who hates, he says this is you're.

Also, just the condescension of this is my thing, This is not your thing.

You're a dumb comedian.

Yeah, and.

He's like making fun of how he dresses earlier.

And that's when Bill Burr is like, you don't look good, you don't dress good.

You dress like a defendant.

You look like you're trying to get off of a drunk driving charge.

Like they're they're playfully bantering.

And then Bill Burr seems to lose his patience with them as the episode goes on.

And by the end, Bill Maher is like he's just drinking water on Bill Burr's show.

By the end of Club Random, he is genuinely like a blasted out of his mind like he is wrapped.

And I don't think Bill Burr has a ton of respect for that by the end.

Bill Maher has really, you know, picked a bone with young people who have supported Palestinians or or said that it is bad that they are being massacred with seemingly no consequences from the world taking aim at people like Chappelle Rhone quote from him and says you killed at Coachella this year, but when Hamas killed at a music festival like like making a punch line out of that.

Yeah, he goes.

He's really it's it's his whole thing is he keeps being like, you know, you have this song where you go, I went down on you in a bathroom.

But if you went down on someone in a bathroom in Gaza, they'd throw you off a roof.

Like it's that period of so.

Therefore, therefore, all these children should die.

Yeah, it's the period of Hasbro where it's like, oh, well, you know what?

They kill every gay person in Gaza the second they find out they're gay.

Their launch, It's like really taking delight in describing the deaths of gay people and being like, no, no, I'm defending gay people by like taking a weird delight in describing their deaths at the hands of the evil and exotic Muslims I have conjured up in my brain.

So Bill Maher also takes issue with college protesters.

He has made this joke so many times and it always bombs.

It's the same joke every time.

Every single time he goes, they're protesting for Hamas.

That's like rooting for the planes on 9/11.

And of the clips that we have in the document, I watched all of them, and in none of them does the audience seem to pick up that this is supposed to be a punchline.

So I'll play a little example of that just.

Find a reason why I thought I was right about doing this.

It happened after October 7th.

I mean, people demonstrating for Hamas, for Hamas.

It's like rooting for the planes on 9/11.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and it's.

A joke?

Fuck's sake, I mean that.

It's always a good joke when you have to immediately tell people.

You have to tell people that that's a joke.

OK, fuck it, one more.

Or the lab.

And again, like, for the people who say, you know, you've changed, I didn't change the left, change.

The idea that there would be kids protesting for this terrorist organization, Hamas, that's just crazy to me.

I mean, it's like, it's like if they were around on 9/11, they'd be rooting for the planes.

Yeah, well, a lot of that comes from.

The interviewer does not stop.

It does.

Not Larry.

Register.

It doesn't even register as a joke.

Like rooting for the planes?

When I talk about it on the podcast, as my guest pointed out, I feel like we were all rooting for the planes on 9/11, but unfortunately, the planes lost on 9/11.

I would not call that a victory for the planes.

What happened to the planes?

Like the joke truly makes absolutely no sense.

It's incredible.

And he did it on his most recent comedy special, which he says is the best he's ever done, I think.

He's got to smoke a little less weed.

I mean, my, my disagreements with his politics, his life, everything about the guy, whatever aside, we'll get into the very end of this podcast.

But he could smoke a little less weed.

I mean, like, is he concerned that his cognitive abilities are are declining because he was a little sharper than his career?

Anyway, so.

So Trump wins in 2024 and Bill says he's not going to let him drive him preemptively crazy this time.

And he has dinner with Trump.

Set up by Kid Rock.

Was that?

Wait, what?

Yes, Kid Rock.

He had Kid Rock on Club Random and Kid Rock was like you got to meet this guy and Bill Maher's like I'd love to have dinner with him.

And then like he had dinner with him like 2 weeks later.

That's how close Kid Rock is to the president.

He got Bill Maher at dinner with him in like a matter of weeks.

Dude, this this country's so cooked dude.

Yeah, we're fucked anyway, so this doesn't go over very well.

People don't like it.

Larry David writes an op-ed in the New York Times.

There's sort of a humorous op-ed about this, sort of like comparing it to like a dinner with Hitler.

My dinner with Adolf.

Yeah, dinner with Adolf and Bill Maher gets mad and said it's an insult to 6,000,000 Jews.

And I wonder, I wonder, I wonder if Larry David's also Jewish, by the way.

I know I didn't know I hooked.

That up on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

I feel like it'd be rude to ask.

Could be anything based upon the way, you know, either way he presents himself anyway.

So he's, you know, he's really unfunny about this as you mentioned.

Well, and I have that he went on TMZ's 2 Angry Men to defend the dinner and he basically said that he should be a hero.

That's my question to those people.

And by the way, I had my people go through the numbers.

It's really only the 10% of the far, far left who hated me before this.

So it hasn't those same people.

And I would say to them, as opposed to what?

I have the opportunity to go to the White House and talk to the president and not give up my principles.

It seems like nobody noticed that I didn't go MAGA.

I had the opportunity to talk to Donald Trump and say to things to him that maybe he never hears.

Oh I'm sure you fucking really spoke truth to power, bud.

I suppose I got invited to chum it up with the president.

I haven't.

And what was I supposed to do?

I should be celebrated.

And also, I had my people look into this.

They ran the numbers, whatever the fuck that means.

I the numbers, yeah, I want to say so.

Jared pulls the clips.

I just want to say I've watched this whole thing.

There is no further clarification on what the numbers are, what numbers he's referring to, who these people are, how they would run any sort of number, and how it could churn out a number where it's only 10% of the far left that has a problem with it.

How many all like the numbers?

It also just like doesn't make sense right?

Because he's like, my people ran the numbers and the only people mad about me kicking it, slurping back a cold one with Daddy Trump, are people who hated me already.

Which is why I'm about to rant for the rest of my fucking life on every single show I do about how like people were mad that I just went and had a conversation.

If nobody's mad about it, why are you?

You know, I don't know.

He had Matt Gaetz on Club Random and another one of his mantras is.

Of course there's another man.

There's another man who who's whose reputation needs reclaiming.

Literally says to Matt Gaetz, I don't believe you did anything because if you had, you'd be in jail right now.

That's how it works in America.

He keeps going.

He's like, he's always saying he's like, the left hates me, but I don't care.

He said it.

I'd seen him like, say it like a dozen times.

And I'm just watching the Matt Gaetz episode live and he goes, the left hates me, but I don't care.

And I pause it and I go.

It feels like when you say that all the time, you actually do care.

I unposit and Matt Gaetz goes, actually it seems like you do care because you talk about it all the time.

And it's like imagine.

Oh my God.

Imagine like I just got read to filth by Matt Gaetz.

I also want to just interject here, one other thing.

It's like I didn't go mega.

I didn't go mega.

I didn't have Kid Rock introduced me to the president Donald Trump, who talks about like, like basically wiping out all of his enemies like some kind of insane king.

And if Kid Rock introduced me to Donald Trump, I didn't go MAGA.

I just happened to do that.

That's like a, it's like a really crazy thing to like mentally process and like, what truths would he really drop out of?

Like he'd be like actually like it's, you know, it's wrong to use the N word.

Like, you know, he's not the person to even say that, right?

So.

The truths he dropped on him, he's like, and I told the president, you're scaring people.

And he listened to that.

Like, that's his big thing.

He's like, I told Trump, you're scaring people.

And he's like, at one point Trump said, like, you know, I didn't win in 2020.

And Bill Maher goes and I told him, wow, I never thought I'd hear you say that.

And then he kind of left.

He didn't get mad at me.

He's a much more reasonable guy then he portrays himself in public.

Like that's the tone of the 12 minute bit he does about the dinner with Trump.

He also, you know, he claims I went in there, you know, after this like monologue, he does this 12 minute thing about how reasonable and normal Trump is in private.

He's actually a pretty pretty just standard sane kind of guy.

He's not the guy you see on TV.

You know, he says he didn't give up anything.

He's still him.

But then he had Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law on Club Random and actually said that he he did change.

He did give up his principles.

And then I and then I said.

But you know what, I will also admit, not that one, but yes, have I taken some cheap shots?

I have, and that's not necessary.

And by the way, I'm kind of bored with it.

You've been on the public stage here for 10 years, more before he was run for president.

And since then, no jokes about his weight, no jokes about his hair, his makeup, his nothing.

Melania, I have enough on my plate with the policy.

I don't have to go there.

So I thought, like, you know, this is how people bridge.

Yeah.

They you make a little thing here, I make a little move this way.

It doesn't hurt me.

It doesn't hurt you.

OK, he said.

I make a little move this way, you make a little move.

What move do we think Bill Maher invents Trump to do?

Blow up people in the Caribbean Sea.

That's it's like, who the hell does this guy think he is?

To be like, well, you need people like me in the president's ear.

And it's like, I need you in the president's ear, like I need my mother in the president's ear.

I at least think my mother would, you know, a blab, some secret Donald Trump told her in confidence while she was at a party.

At least I know I would get that out of my mother hanging around Donald Trump.

What benefit is there from Donald, from Donald Trump spending time with Bill Maher and the policy thing?

He also does not criticize the policies like there's like no substantial policy criticisms either.

Well, policies he does criticize.

Check this one out for a segue, Will it's a lot of the left wing ones.

You mentioned that he you know, years ago was like we might need a little bit of socialism in this country and now he is just like raving A lunatic about it.

We have here at the doc.

He ended this season of real time by again complaining about people who were mad at him for meeting Trump and then just ripping into socialism.

So the DSA specifically.

Mom Donnie, as we've discussed in different episodes on here, presents a real problem for people who have issues with Muslims, who have issues with the left.

He is like a kind of perfect storm for them, and he's like a perfect storm for Bill in many ways, don't you think?

Well, I mean, like he's like, you know, he's a, he's ADSA Muslim brown guy who, you know, happens to inhabit all the policies that Bill make Bill nervous.

Yeah, now I am a little confused because as someone who's been watching a fair amount of real time from over the last few months, I could have sworn his last name was pronounced Mandami Madati Domnami.

I I've never heard the pronunciation of Mom Donnie before.

Are you sure that's the correct way to say that?

Because.

Maybe, maybe Bill was talking about someone else.

We should cut him a break here.

No, it's like, it's like a, you know, a fifth grader's understanding of how to bully somebody, right?

I mean.

I, I think it, I think it is both he doesn't respect him and he genuinely can't do it.

Like he'll literally be like, did I say like you can see him get frustrated with his inability to say it, which is more pathetic because it is Mom, Donnie, it's your mother and a guy named Donald.

It couldn't be easier for someone to break it down for him.

But he so one of his big things is he's talked a lot this year about like the Democrats losing young men, the Democrats losing young men.

Oh, the Democrats need white men.

They need to be sensible.

They need to stop all this woke stuff to get white men back.

And it's like we'll look at the candidates that young white guys vote for.

It's it's Mahmdani.

And previously it was like Bernie Sanders.

So The thing is that nothing, nothing presents a challenge for Bill Maher because he just lies.

He just lies and makes up his.

Own reality, he'll just change the argument or the narrative when he's confronted with some sort of obstacle.

Yeah, it has.

It has to be some version of the world where Bill Maher can still be the smartest guy in the world, right?

Yeah.

You're going to steal my Thunder.

That's what I want us to talk about at the end.

But yeah, I mean, so I want to move here because there's just been a lot of talk.

And I know it's something that that is interested of interest to you.

Will.

There's been a lot of talk about Bill and his relationship to women.

We've talked about it a couple times through here.

I'm fucking obsessed.

All right, all right.

This is we're now entering the pervert section of the podcast.

So if that's you, turn it up.

We, we, we recently sold for charity Will and, and we, we would love to share one with you A like T-shirts in the style of the TPUSA freedom shirt, but it says femdom.

So we're no stranger to sexual commentary and fun.

But Bill is a different, he's a different case in many ways.

I, you know, we, we played earlier that he would refer to himself as an insult when he was younger.

And there are a lot of sex workers who have come forward online to sort of drop the T about their interactions with him.

You know, I would just say, let's leave that alone here and just let him do his business with sex workers in private.

But he's also made jokes, like, about only fans.

He once said, boy, if there's one thing millennials love more than canceling the patriarchy, it's women having sex for money.

Maybe he's just trying to feel young by he.

Have you ever thought about that?

He's 70 years old.

He he also did a whole ending show monologue about Honora in Hollywood's obsession with sex workers.

And he compares it to slavery at one point during it.

And that's, that's what sparked like one of the references here in the doc.

That was what that was what sparked this woman posting on TikTok about him because, like, yeah, he's like, is it really good that we're encouraging women to think sex work is like, an OK thing to do?

Well, you have this clip that we're about to play here with a a a porn star named Tiana Trump, no relation to Donald Trump because she is black.

And she wouldn't be the most surprising thing in the world to have Stron Thurmond 2 point O wandering around.

That's that's true.

Tiana starts to talk a little bit about Bill Maher in sort of, you know, just sideways terms.

And then the hosts are basically you're talking about Bill Maher.

And then they sort of dropped the act and she just talks about her interaction.

And Make Love and.

He was like.

Slow down baby.

Like every time like.

You know, I'm trying to get this shit done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You wouldn't get the fuck out of there.

At this point.

Because he's just like, hey, I'm with a 60 year old white dude who's slicking his hair back and he's pale.

That's.

A pale motherfucker.

He's almost see through.

That guy is almost see through.

And when you're having sex with him, you're probably just like, hey, just let me get this money and get the fuck out of there.

Yes.

Yeah, Oh.

And my boyfriend was waiting, I think.

Outside, and the Camaro parked in his.

Garage.

I don't know if he knows he was out there waiting.

Because he wouldn't bill.

Put me in the guest house.

It's the party house, yeah.

Oh, oh, keep.

Playing that's like, right we get.

Coming.

It's a guest house.

Right.

And then I think it's his yard and then his house.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't.

Get to go in that far, but I got to see his guest house get.

To fuck him in the guest house, yes.

Shit, you didn't even get to fuck.

Him in the main house.

No, that's some slave shit.

Maybe.

Maybe the second slave?

Shit like.

That's.

Fucked up because he got in trouble.

For that, you know that, right?

Wait for what?

For making a slave comment to about being a house.

That's what I wanted to keep in there because I think it's important to remember that you're dealing with a black sex worker here and the context of him saying that.

Has her come all the way out to his house, but then won't even let her come into his house so that he can do whatever.

He also IDs her and gets mad at her because she says she's 21 and she's actually 18 at the time but he still has sex with her.

He still.

Doesn't.

Yeah, she says on the clip.

She says that he that he said to her.

I don't like liars.

I was like shaking his head.

Whatever.

Thanks Dad.

Let's go have sex now.

If you're in the document that another woman on TikTok said that sex workers charge him $5000 an hour because he's so insufferable.

Yeah, that's what it, that's what she wrote.

There also was an Onion headline from like 2000 or 2001 and the headline was Bill Maher gets into argument with Republican sex worker or Republican prostitute.

He did an episode of politically incorrect from the Playboy Mansion and Adam it's that is despicable.

That is a despicable 20 minutes of television.

You will.

It's like, appalling, except you will come away with a new and intense respect and appreciation for Scott Weiland, who at one point says, hold on, guys.

I think it's really disgusting that we are saying that just because you spend some money on a woman, she's obligated to have sex with you.

And then he proceeds to get a bigger laugh than Bill Maher or Adam Corolla does the whole rest of the episode.

Oh my.

God, Adam.

Corolla, Jesus.

Christ, so Adam Corolla is making jokes about.

They had Scott Weiland killed over that.

You know that I'm I'm going to be Candace Owens.

They gave him a hot dose and it it's one of the questions Bill Maher is like, OK, first question, if a guy flies a woman out to see him, isn't she obligated to have sex with him?

And over the next 8 minutes it becomes so clear that that just happened to him and he is just like he is just working through.

That rocks.

That fucking rocks.

I love that he's just spending that money to fly her out and she's like, actually, no thanks.

Yeah, I'm.

Going to go see my friends but at one point Adam Corolla makes a joke about getting prostitutes and Bill Margos.

Adam, you don't go to prostitutes do you?

And Adam Corolla goes not the ones you go to.

And Bill Margos, I don't go to prostitutes and it feels like the I think you should leave sketch where he goes to the manager of the restaurant goes hey, can you tell my date to stop eating all the fully loaded nachos and then when his day is what I wanted to move tables because I see it's cold.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

You see a sex worker every other day.

What?

What?

And some of them are black porn stars.

Who's what?

What are you talking about?

And then I also told before we started recording, I, I mentioned a story somebody told me on the podcast where she went to Hawaii with the theoretical promise that she would be opening or she would be emceeing the shows.

Bill Maher used to do every Hawaii, every New Year's in Hawaii, as if those poor people haven't suffered enough at the hands of America.

Every New Year's Eve, he would do a run of shows in Hawaii.

And somebody she used to open for was like, come with me, Maybe you can like MC.

And then instead, Bill Maher had Sean Penn MC the comedy shows.

But at one point early on, they went to a strip club and Bill Maher was like, hey, give me the youngest girls you got and send them to the private room we're going to be using.

So he's a cool guy who's normal T.

Brad he There's no love.

Jared has his face on the mic.

He told Howie Mandel that he's an He's like, I'm an expert on women in their 20s.

That's a literal direct quote.

He was like women in their early 20s.

They're wild.

They're too wild even for me.

But it's sounding like women in their 20s are an expert on him.

Oh yeah, they know how to get what they want out of him.

Oh my God.

I forgot to say you guys, the clip he had, he went to Billy, he had Billy Joel on Club Random and he told Billy Joel he's like during COVID, I tried to write a song.

It's called The World Makes You Lie.

And Billy Joel's like, OK, that's and the episode is so good because Billy Joel's like, yeah, look at this fucking guy I'm talking to like the whole time, he's just like leaning on a piano and he's like, Christ, get a load of this guy.

I don't got to say nothing during this interview.

He's talking the whole time.

And Bill Maher's like, this song is called The World Makes You Lie.

And Billy Joel's like, oh, OK, that's a good title.

And Bill Maher goes, yeah, it's about how the world makes you lie about things like, say, the age difference in a relationship because society says it's inappropriate.

I mean, it cuts to Billy Joel.

It cuts to Billy Joel, who is now stone faced staring at him.

What the fuck is like?

The world makes you lie about things like, oh, I don't know.

The age of my girlfriend.

Yeah, why do they?

Make me do that.

It's not.

It's so unfair when you think about it.

He had Haktua on Club Random and she was like, I, I should set you up with my granny.

I should set you up with my granny.

And Bill Maher starts laughing and goes, oh, if you only knew about me.

And it's like, man, why are you trying so hard to make people think you are like an illegal sex criminal?

Like, why can't you be able to?

I think it's a little normal.

I think that's like the one full episode of Club Random I've watched.

Is the Hawk 2 2:01 just because like she's on there and the whole thing about like the hawk to a girl is she made a joke that went viral and then tried to start a media career but joke about but but she has jobs.

Or.

She has nothing to say, right?

I mean, there's just, there's just like not much going on up there.

She's she like, doesn't want to be political.

She doesn't like, she's just a character.

It's like people invited on the show so that they can be like, we did a show with the hawk to a girl and then she gets there and it's like, what kind of music do you like?

She's like, I like country music.

And they're like, wow, very cool.

So this is happening during the Bill Maher show, except he keeps asking all these questions and like really felt like during the show he's like kind of trying to hit on her about like so humorous.

You made a joke about sucking Dick.

That's why he.

Probably had her over.

He saw a young woman talking about is it oral sex or a hand job.

The Octo.

Oral sex.

It's a yeah, it's a blow job, yeah.

Blow job, not a hand job.

I could like if you because you could spit on it for a hand job too.

Yeah.

Like he's, you know, he probably was like, OK, this is a young woman who made a joke like this.

And I wonder if she'd be interested about him being next to a man with a lot of money and power.

Yeah, I think he it kind of he at some point, though, he shifts into being just paternal towards her because there's also a point where he's like, here's what you need to do, OK, here's what you need to do with your career, what you need to do.

You need to start a podcast about sex.

And it's just like, hey, shithead, do you not think that's the first thing every other moron has pitched to this woman?

The second they got in the room with her.

How many don't like sex?

It's like it's just also like, it's just like I got my big idea, my Mad Men sign of you'll be like got an idea for you, ma'am.

Boom, sex.

OK, so so there's like you're just a span of person, something like really worked out for you with that sex joke.

Hear me out on this.

What if we did like more of that?

Do we think that could be good?

When, when I was I did this like big Comedy Festival in 2012, back when people saw a lot of promise in what I was doing.

And so I was taking like agency meetings afterwards and one of the places, they had like 19 people in the room.

And I'm just thinking back to that because they weren't a very big agency.

So they were like literally desperate.

They were desperate to beat any other agency in signing somebody.

So they went all out and then I still signed somewhere else and but they had like 19 people in the room and they were like all talking.

They're all pitching so much.

And now I'm just imagining that exact scene, like 19 people in the room.

It was actually Rose Mcgowan's former agents.

And when I sat down in the chair in the room, they mentioned she had just been in there.

And then they made some disgusting sexist comment about her.

And I remember being like, I remember being like, cool.

I've entered a room filled with people who literally do not know a single thing about me or my comedy.

This is a great way to start this off.

But I'm just imagining her sitting down 19 guys and all of them just sitting down really intensely and being like, hear us out sex.

Like the the one thing anybody's ever heard about you.

That's our pitch to you.

And then they are just like.

If you're not convinced, consider this.

Sex sells.

It's like a billboard or a blackboard and they flip it around and it says sex and then also sells on the other side.

OK.

So, so before we, there's so many things that you dropped into the dock that were great.

Well, we're not going to get to everything.

We skipped over some of the stuff that I put in the dock, I think.

Hey, you don't have to.

You don't have to make me feel better about it.

I know I overload things.

I got a lot of Bill Maher on my mind.

No, I, I, you know, I like, I'm like, I'm like pickled from sitting at the desk and working on the Bill Maher thing over the last few days.

Yeah, I do.

Every time I've texted you this week, I've been like, hey, dude, what's you're like Bill Maher?

She's like Bill Maher.

Well, I need to get this.

It's like, it's like, it's like having like a an evil spirit.

I need cleansed and I think I'm almost done with it.

I think it's gonna get out after this.

So, So I for the last thing, this is just no context here.

He is talking to Neil deGrasse Tyson briefly.

Neil deGrasse Tyson kind of pressed him and was like, hey, why won't you play in college campuses anymore?

And Bill's like, nobody does that anymore because they're just awful and whatever.

And he's like, well, isn't it, you know, wouldn't what if you had to start over and do it now?

Wouldn't you do it differently?

Wouldn't you try to get in or you kind of to kind of get off my lawn now?

And Bill doesn't react very well to that.

You read the politics, did you?

I didn't read the politics.

Yes, you did I.

How the fuck do you know what I did?

Because you I know, I know your jokes of the error.

They were great.

Well, a lot of people think they're great now.

I don't.

I don't know if you don't anymore.

No, no, what I meant was.

Am I not?

They were enough.

They were.

Jokes that would work on a college campus?

OK, surely there's a portfolio of jokes that would still work on a college campus.

Surely.

I would hope not.

From what Maybe some college campuses?

The ones you read about are fucking insane.

Given up on the entire generation and you don't know how to make them.

Live up on any place that doesn't even remotely attempt to believe in free speech and thinks that anything that that they hear, that they don't like, that they don't agree with is violence.

These people are fucking nuts and you should be calling them out.

Somebody like you who has standing with kids should be not.

You're doing what you're doing what parents do.

You're taking the path of least resistance and therefore hurting the kids and yourself.

Parents ruin both their lives.

They ruin their fucking spoiled kids lives and they ruin their own lives because the kids rule the roost.

So that's what you're doing on a national level.

I'm feeling more like on the porch get.

Off my lawn, Really.

I feel like we're in the Barber shop.

That works too.

I said, as I said, the Boo boos, Ice spice, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the things, Zoomers, zoomers everywhere, being like that guy fucking, he's fucking dope.

That's what they're saying all over, all over the country.

And if Neil deGrasse Tyson was like, hey, knock it off with this woke shit, they'd be like, I don't know, He's, he's a pretty smart guy, right?

He's really upset there.

Well, that's why I want to close on that.

He's really upset and I think he like it really transitions us well to the to the big questions at the end.

But you know, I mean, he seems really pissed off that he was even asking him about that stuff.

He's unbelievably brittle.

It's the same, he's the same with Jon Lovett.

It's why he gets so upset at Jon Lovett.

And it's not even like not even being challenged, but just the idea.

And yet it's it's a part of the reason he's so bad at comedy now.

It's like the Matt Chrisman theory of political comedy where it's not funny because they get themselves so angry that they just start screaming like a lunatic.

So like, it's it's not funny to hear a guy blow his mic out because he's yelling about the woke.

Like even if the joke was well written, you'd still be like, like, I don't like this.

This is an unpleasant noise in my brain to process.

Yeah, if you're too sincere, it stops being a joke, you know?

I also like the part where, and I thought this is really telling where he says essentially lots of people like my jokes and it's like really tense, right?

You know, and he seems like you can feel his insecurity.

Suddenly it reminds me of like, have you ever seen the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles with John Candy and Steve Martin, the John Hughes movie?

And, and there's a part in which he's he challenges him.

The John Steve Martin character challenges the John Candy character and it gets emotional and the John Candy goes character goes like, I like me, my wife likes me.

And it's like it's all of a sudden it's like, it's really, it's sentimental, but you're like, Oh my God, this guy's in pain.

And and it just doesn't start to be like lots of guys, lots of people like my jokes.

It's like, it's like that's like the least funny thing that guy's ever said and that's saying something.

Well, this feels like a good place to wrap it up.

I This has got to be the longest podcast episode we've recorded, but I've had a fantastic time.

It's a Christmas present.

Yeah, I'm.

Coming out for Christmas.

So, so yeah, if the holidays are getting weird, hopefully this gave you a bit of escape.

And I know my dad watches a lot of Bill Maher.

A lot of people's parents I know watch a lot of Bill Maher.

And it's a big game.

What better time to teach you about Bill Maher then before you're going to be around all your parents who might show you epic based Bill Maher clips.

You know, or, or I you have something to push back when your zoomer cousins are like you have to watch this Neil deGrasse Tyson TikTok that I saw.

But will it's it's been an absolute pleasure.

Before we get into the final question, tell us about your podcast.

Where could people find it?

What?

What is the mission?

It feels a little bit like being like it's the opposite of the my not involved in human trafficking shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by the shirt.

It's a thing where it's like it's like my appearance on this podcast is answering a lot of questions.

You just asked me about my podcast.

Like I hate him.

It's I hate Bill Maher.

People know where to get podcasts.

The free feed is almost all real time episodes.

I'm theoretically working like in order from the pilot through the show.

I understand that's not feasible in the law.

I'll be like in my 60s I think when I finish or something insane.

But I jump around I'll do like.

I'll do the most recent episode sometimes if it seems like it's worth covering or if I just need a break.

I had a concern that I would look into the eyes of my newborn child and go, I don't want to live a life where I focus on hatred all the time and just stop doing the podcast.

So I did an episode Francesca Fiorentini and I watched the episode from right after Obama got elected to see if I felt like that was the best possible chance he had to be good.

Those were the best conditions for him to be good after Obama wins.

And I think I ended up titling that episode microaggressions exclamation mark.

So he did not succeed at my mission for him of being good.

And once my baby is vaccinated, I will resume doing stand up comedy again.

I just don't you.

Know and when when Will is on the road in your town.

Go see my man.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, it's been a long time.

I might be terrible.

I might be terrible at it.

Now I'm going to have a lot of ring rows to shake up.

In our in our conclusion, this is the part for everybody who listens to The Who the Hell Is episodes where you give your deeper thoughts about things.

Who the hell is Bill Maher?

Really reasonable, rational guy.

It seems like, you know, he just wants to get along.

He is, no.

Who is Bill Maher?

I think really depends who you ask.

If you ask a regular person, Bill Maher these days is pretty fucking annoying, pretty weird, probably a sex pest to put it lightly.

And really, you know, any sort of liberal credentials he may have earned, any bona fides, I think are just completely down the toilet.

He is, you know, mostly beloved, I think by a right wing audience, sort of the demographic that like my dad's in, for example.

I mean, I just know he watches the show.

So I keep bringing it up of people who are like generally Republican, but are not down with like the Trump movement.

And this is like for, for all the people in the world that want to consider themselves smarter, right?

It it's like a show for people who want to feel smart.

And I mean no disrespect to my dad when I say that, right?

It's just I, I think that's what Bill Maher's character is.

He's like the guy who helps you make you feel smarter than other people.

I'm going to leave my take there for now.

But Mike, after everything we've gone over, who the hell is Bill Maher?

I think Bill Maher really does represent the center, like the idea of the center in this country.

And it's not a good thing because, you know, this whole idea of left right in this country is such it is so imbalanced, right compared to who is creating harm for humanity and, and, and who is not.

It's just completely skewed and imbalanced.

And, and, and I did for that reason.

I wish we could get out of the left right binary discussion, but he really does represent it in many ways, because what what the center does in this country is give the right an opportunity to crush the majority of the country.

And what Bill Maher does is punch down and suck up to power.

And that's like the only thing he really does.

And that's why, you know, I mean, he left to the side of Israel immediately after October 7th.

It was where the power structure needed him to be.

He didn't he didn't pull his pre Iraq war where he had on.

You know, they have made him that way.

They will continue to put him on CNN.

He's been on CNN.

You know his reruns have been there for a while because he is the perfect representation of the center, which is to keep capitalism flowing, keep the stock market going.

Continue to empower these kind of fascistic goons.

And he doesn't he's he's, he does that when when he repeatedly platforms people like Marjorie Taylor Green and and Kid Rock and like RFK Junior and stuff that is not an accident at all.

It's to help normalize stuff that people in a vacuum would think are awful and against their interests.

So will you have spent a lot of time looking at this individual?

And I'm just very curious like, who is he?

What do you think he is?

And I can either be a personal thing, like what do you think he's like as a person?

Or it can be.

What do you think he represents?

I'll give you the floor.

Bill Maher is America, you know He has never been.

Not just not perfect, but perhaps he even not ideal in his role.

But there was a role and you could understand some of the benefits that came with the many negatives.

But as time has gone on and he has been worn down by age and being sedentary and just becoming stuck in a single place, he no longer even has a beneficial role in the world.

And you watch his show, you get nothing out of it.

You come to America, you get nothing out of it.

You know, the Grand Canyon, who gives a shit is any is a hashtag adult thing not funny.

It's the same thing, you know, So I say he who is Bill Maher.

Bill Maher is all of us.

Bill Maher is the very notion of life, but especially death itself.

You are in the the grand scheme of things, no matter how much you wish it weren't so, You are nothing.

You are nothing to anyone.

You will never be anything.

And despite, despite whatever material rewards this world has gifted you in the moment, unless you somehow managed to exceed the accomplishments of Alexander or Genghis Khan, you will end up as less than a less than a footnote in the least read version of John's bathroom reader.

In a bathroom that is locked up, abandoned, burned down, and then launched into space.

And that's who Bill Maher is.

Thank you very much for that.

I haven't.

I haven't.

I have no response.

Will Walton, thank you so much.

Thank you so much and I want to get in case, you know, for people, unless you're you're, you know, to to be a little religulous.

A religious and a homunculi.

I want to wish.

Everyone hip Mike, for God's sake.

Dude, happy Hanukkah and a Merry Christmas because this is a Christmas holiday.

This is one for for people.

Everybody who's traveling, they're, you know, they're banging this one.

We're rocking the box with you.

Thank you.

In the box?

What the hell does that mean?

It's been a long podcast.

Oh, there's a magic man in the sky making a box rock.

Oh, OK, Mike.

That's me.

I'm I'm the magic man.

You have to think about how much death, suffering, and most importantly, Mike, misogyny has come from that box of rocks.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

I think it's time for everybody to listen to a long super cut of Bill Maher smacking his lips together.

Should we all smack our lips to just so the transition is smooth for everybody?

Let's go.

Yeah.