My next guest is a stand up comedian, podcaster, and host of the long running HBO political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher. He is also an individual that's got a new stand up comedy special coming out. Is anyone else seeing this? January tenth is the date? The one and only Bill Maher, My buddy, what's going on? Big time?
How are you? Sir?
How's everything?
I feel like the title of that show was made for you to announce it. Anyone else you say that better than I do? Well?
Please please, but you do it better. You deserve all the credit in the world. But I want to know how you're feeling right now, Bill, this comedy specialist coming out. Are you in a comedic mood? Are you interested in laughing and having a good time in light of the things that have transpired over the last few months, in the last few weeks, and what you've had to deal with personally in terms of speaking your piece, particularly to the laugh how do you feel about that?
Absolutely? In fact, the very first thing I say in this special is we're here to laugh. You know this show business? Okay? If you're still brooding about the election, you're in the wrong building. I'm here just to make you laugh. And I'm not going to pre hate anything that hasn't happened yet. And also, look around, are you really suffering that much? Now? Trump? Could he blow up the world on the second day. Yeah, he could. But until he does, I'm not going to chase every crazy
thing he does. And I'm not going to get upset about things that happen happened yet. And when I look around America is you know, it's a place with a lot of problems, but also compared to the rest of the world, it's doing better than most places. And you know a lot of people are just living their best lives.
Are you this way period or did it take you a little while to get to this point? After the election?
No, I mean I was ready for Trump to win. I thought that she would win. I thought that America always basically moves forward and not backward. But I was wrong. I was certainly not surprised because I did not think she was a great candidate. But look this, it's not like this country does not need some sort of clean sweeping. Now.
I don't know what that's going to be. I've said this before, this country needs a colonic I would not have chosen Donald Trump to be the doctor to administer that colonic But I'm curious to see, for example, what Elon Musk is going to do. I'm going to I'm curious to see how influential he's going to be. He
is tasked with reinventing the government. Basically, he said some things which I think are great, and I'm on the page with The first thing he said was, we're going to ask everybody in the government who has been staying home, and that's been a lot of people since the pandemic to come back to work. And we expect about twenty percent of the workforce to then just quit, and we
welcome that. And I thought, yeah, that's probably okay, because if twenty percent of the government workforce quit, would we notice the difference. I'm guessing we probably wouldn't. He also said he was going to go after the F thirty five. Okay, perfect, that's exactly the kind of thing we should do. This is a fighter jet that they've been funding to the tune of like a trillion dollars. And he said, first of all, it's obsolete. We don't use fighter jets anymore.
We won't in the very near future. They're just going to get pilots killed. And we have drones now, so why why are we spending a trillion dollars on something we don't need? So if if that's what's going to go on in the government, I'm all for it.
What are your thoughts about somebody that would sit back and say, okay, Elon Musk. I believe South African obviously owns Tesla, owns x formerly known as Twitter, one man having entirely too much power, and now he has just the ear of the president, if not more, once Donald Trump is inaugurated on January twenty first, is this guy really going to look out for America's best interest or is he going to look out for his own best interests?
How does Bill Maher answer that question in light of all that you've seen, Because you've been one of the avid individuals speaking out on behalf of Musk, because you've always been incredibly impressed by his brilliance, his genius. He's been on your show at least once that I can recall, and obviously you felt the way that you felt about him. What are your thoughts about him?
Well? I thought, first of all, it's kind of ironic, you know, that the world's richest man and a former Express president who is a billionaire worm the election and really stuck into the elitists. Huh, that's right. But you know, look, I've criticized Elon where I think he was wrong or he wasn't being honest. I mean Twitter. Look, when he
took over Twitter, it was way too left. I mean that's why I stopped going on it, because you know, as I used to say anything I want to say on Twitter, I can't say on Twitter because you'd be immediately excoriated because it was politically incorrect. And it used to be when it started, a fun place where you could just say funny things, and then it got to be a place where the woke took over and everything was just a minefield. And why put it out there
just to get yourself into trouble? So I stopped going there. And Elon said, well, when I take over, I'm going to make it an even playing field. I'm going to make it a place where the left and the it can both be. But he didn't. He just completely reversed it, and now it's just a place for the right. So he didn't follow up on that, and I keep saying that, and you know, and he also like applauds people on Twitter who should not be applauded, I mean really crazy,
kind of far right people. So you know, he also says things that are just not true very often. He doesn't seem to care about researching things very often. But I mean, good God, Tesla, Starlink, Neurolink, SpaceX. I mean one man has created like three or four of the most important developments in technology in the last twenty years. I mean, you got to give the guy a little credit for that. And also, I will say this about him, I don't think he cares about money now. He has
way too much of it. There has to be a certain point, and I am certainly no socialist, but there has to be a certain point where we just decide, as we did, by the way, one hundred years ago when it was John D. Rockefeller. John D. Rockefeller had I think at one point two was worth two percent of the gross national product of the country, and they did something about it. They made laws about monopolies and so forth. They broke up standard oil. I think Elon
is approaching that money. There's certain there's certain number that I think we just have to say to somebody, Okay, you won, you won the money game, but like, how much is too much? Can it? Can one person have a trillion dollars? It just seems like that's taking it a little too far.
I agree.
Again, I don't think he's I don't think he cares about money. That's not what motivates him. And I would be curious to see what he's going to do, because again, America, it's not like it's not completely bloated. It is and it's gotten out of hand and somebody needs to go in there and do what he proposes to do. But we'll see in uh, in execution, everything is in the details.
I recently sat down with a guy by the name of Dave Rubin. I'm sure you are aware of who he is about. That's where he bragged about going to the Lakers game with you. I told him you and I went to the Lakers game together as well recently, and and and we just he and I just finished talking. And one of the things that I called him, I said, listen, he's he's not a lieutenant or general or whatever, but let's say he is, meaning Bill Maher, consider me a
soldier because I stand directly behind him. In support of all the things that he has said, particularly over the last several years, about the left and how the left
pretty much lost its way. Getting personal with you for a second, how difficult, if difficult at all, has it been for you to deal with some of the things that have been thrown in your direction just because you were on your show telling the truth about what the left did wrong and how it got in its own way and what it needed to do to fix the party.
Your thoughts, you know, you know, Stephen, and you can't have everything. That's what you come to if you live long enough. Would I like to have everybody on my side? Would I like to have everybody be my fan? Of course? Was it not great when some super woke people left because I wasn't on their page? Yeah? I wish everybody was still my fan, But you can't have that. Do I think I deserve a bunch of Emmys that I would never get because this town is woker than I am. Yeah?
I do. I don't think we have the same criteria about what constitutes excellence. It's okay, you can't have everything. I would take a million time if you offered it to me. Against those things, the joy of being able to speak my mind as I see it, and the love that that gets me from people from all stripes who appreciate that the things that people say to me. I've been at with every type of celebrity. They don't say the things they say to me to other celebrities.
That means more to me than anything, but things that people say to me, and how much it means to them that they feel like there's somebody out there who is never pulling a punch and who will just call out anybody wherever they are in the political spectrum if he thinks they're saying something goofy. That really means the world to me. So I have that, and that's plenty.
Absolutely you deserve, and make no mistake about it. I wanted to know, in light of what you just articulated your thoughts about Mark Zuckerberg coming out recently. I think it was yesterday or so, and he was talking about how what role Meta is going to play and now they're no longer going to fact check and they're not going to be as stridently in favor of the left or whatever the case may be. I think that he's just trying to curry favor with Donald Trump or whatever.
I wanted to know what you made of that, and what do you think is going to be the fallout from that, knowing what you know about the political stratosphere and specifically about Donald Trump.
I'm a free speech guy, you know, I believe not an absolute free speech. That's not even in the Constitution. And of course we have the example of you know, yelling fire in a crowded theater and so forth. There are things that you can do. But I think he's basically right. We've gone way too far toward fact whose facts. I mean. COVID was a perfect example of this, and I think that's something that really opened a lot of people's eyes to what's going on with censorship in this country.
We were not allowed to really discuss this, and it was a new phenomenon, this new pathogen we had. It should have been discussed. We're finding out now as each week rolls by more and more it's pretty obvious that COVID, the origin of it was the lab. I think in fifty years when people look back, they'll say, wait a second, there was a lab in Wuhan where the disease started, that was studying this disease and using gain of function research on it, and they were debating whether this was
the cause of it. Now it could have been the wet markets, absolutely, we don't know for sure. But the fact that we weren't even allowed to discuss that it was coming from a lab, which again it probably was. Now we know that. You tell you all you need to know the fact that Justin Trudeau just stepped down
in Canada. I mean, this guy had a very high approval rating five years ago and he left really very unpopular because Canada became that kind of place where you really did not have the kind of free speech we do and many other countries in Europe. Now this is part of what Mark Zuckerberd was talking about. We don't want to become like these countries in Europe where they have rules about what you can say that's going to be censored simply because it's hurting somebody's feelings. You know,
you can't say something about Islam because it's Islamophobia. But what if it's true. You know, we just had a terrible incident in New Orleans that was a jihadist attack. We want to be able to speak about that plainly and honestly without worrying somebody's going to say, don't say that because it's not all Muslims. Well, no one's saying it's all Muslims. We're saying we need to discuss about
this honestly and openly and patently. And you can't do that if somebody's looking for your shoulder and saying, well, this is going to hurt somebody's feelings. Okay, feelings are not as important as the First Amendment.
Fair enough, and it's one of the things that people allude to and complain about, as you have about the
left because of what culture. With that being said, one would ask Bill Maher in this day and age, why would you still call yourself a liberal or a Democrat as opposed to an independent, considering how you're thinking and how polar opposite that appears to be to what's transpired with the Democratic Party, Because I'm reading this article from the Wall Street Journal, and essentially the paraphrase not exact, not your exact words, but you were talking about, you
know what you still consider yourself, but that party is not the party that I've been looking at in recent memory.
Yeah, well, I've always been an independent. I mean I never threw in with the Democrat because I always knew they'd disappoint me at some point.
But I've Georgia Party. I've Georgia Party.
Yeah. But old school liberal, yes, I mean that's I think what I always was and always will be. As I say in the special, the people who are saying, oh, you're a Republican now, No, I'm not a Republican and I never will be a Republican for all the reasons I haven't been. They're too religious. They're fiscal hypocrites who think it's awful when America spends money it doesn't have except when they're in office, and then it's always perfectly okay.
They're in denial about racism, they're in denial about the environment. They're always blaming the underprivileged when they should be blaming the overprivileged. And then they added to that shitty mixtape they don't believe in democracy anymore, and they threw their lot in with the sociopath named Donald Trump, who thinks that elections only count when they win. So they have a sizable lead in being the more threatening party I
think to this country. But that doesn't mean I'm going to hold my tongue about what I think is wrong about the left, and I don't and old school liberal I could give you so many examples. It's a very big part of the show where I'm talking about the fact that people somehow think that wokeness is an extension of liberalism, when very often it's the opposite of liberalism. I mean, just like the Israel situation, the liberal position has always been a two state solution. I still think
that's the solution. Well, that's not the position of the woke. They want from the river to the sea. So you can have that position, but don't tell me that's the liberal position. The river to the sea does not mean a two state solution. It means you want all of it for the Palestinians. That's fine, that's your position, it's not the liberal position. I haven't changed you have.
Is anyone else seeing this? Your stand up comedy special scheduled for January Tate debut in January tenth on HBO. As you were putting this together, formulating your thoughts, Bill Maher, if you I'm assuming you had to worry about because I don't think you're worried about anybody, But if you had to worry about anybody in today's world, where you
gotta worry about anything that you say or whatever. Who are you more worried about the right or the left when it came to making sure that you said what you needed to say. You are an authentic, as honest as you possibly could be, But you didn't cross the line, who would you find yourself more worried about? As a comedian in this day and age.
Well, first of all, my job is to cross the line. That's what a stand up comedian's job. Not all stand up, not no comedy. Some comedy's just silly, but not mine. So you know, how do you know where the line is until people like me cross it to a degree. I'm never upset when people in the audience recoil. You know, I don't want to make the whole show recoiling. You
want to be popular. But there's a couple of times in the show where people just are like, oh, you know, I mean, we were just talking about the Israel situation. There's a line in there where I say, you know, really, marching for Hamas you're marching four terrorist groups, it's like rooting for the planes on nine to eleven. Well, that's a line that gives people pause. They're like, whoa, did you really go there? And that happens a number of times in the show. It should That's what a comedian
should do, at least a comedian like me. That's what my job is. So do I worry about the people who get so upset about that that they're not going to watch. They're not watching anyway. They left the building a while ago with me. They know I'm not safe. And if you want safe, or you want someone who's just going to tell you what you already believe and just be the echo chamber for you, I'm not your guy and never have been. So do I worry about
those people? Not? Really? The other people I could worry about would be Donald Trump. I mean, he does flirt with authoritarianism, there is no doubt about it. Do I think he's gonna start arresting comedians? I really don't. But you know he's talking about invading Greenland and annexing Canada. You know, he says a lot of he says a lot of stuff Steven Day, He really does. I don't think it's gonna happen. But let me put it this way, under George Bush or anybody else, it never even entered
my mind. With Trump, anything's possible. Anything is possible.
My very last question to you would be this, Outside of making people laugh, which I know you want to do, this is a comedy special after all, does anyone is anyone else seeing this? Is there something else you're hoping to accomplish with this comedy special? And if so, what is that exactly?
Yeah? I mean, I think there's a theme to it, and that is that we have to talk to each other, that we can't just cut each other off. That's one thing I really don't like about the left these days. They're very exclusionary. If you're not exactly on the page with them, if you don't believe in the one true opinion that they have, then they don't even want to talk to you. We saw this after the election where a number of people were advising family members to cut
off people in your own family over the holidays. We're talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas because they voted for the wrong guy in the election. You're not going to talk to people in your family. Yeah, no, no, no, that's not good. I'm not down with that. So I think if there's any message I want people to have, it's you're going to have to talk to people. Because half
the country is not self deporting. They're still going to be here, and just because they voted for Donald Trump, which I would never do, doesn't mean they're bad people. I don't want to hate half the country, and I don't hate half the country Bill ma Man.
I love the relationship that we've cultivated. I love my appearances on Club Random. I've had an absolute blast. It's the only time of my life I've had a contact high in front of the camera. It's all because of you. Snoop Dogg is very, very proud of me for that. I wish you nothing but the best. Can't wait to see this comedy special coming out January tenth. Is anyone else seeing this? You know I will be in front of my two watching. I can't wait to see it.
Happy for you, proud of you, and looking forward to talking to you. Down to line, my brother. You take it easy, okay.
Thank you, man. I love you and I hope I get to see you soon.
You will all the best of you.
Take care,