Ep. #735: Vice President JD Vance, Sen. Raphael Warnock, Larry Wilmore

this episode is brought to you by palm olive family time isn't just the big moments it's weeknight dinners sitting around the table everyone talking all at once so when the plates are empty and the sink is full use palm olive ultra palm olives most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 of grease leaving your dishes sparkling clean and the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together shop now at palm olive.com endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com welcome to an hbo podcast from the hbo late night series real time with bill maher hi appreciate it thank you thank you for coming and thank you for whooping and putting up with the extra security ah what an exciting day thank you i appreciate it thank you thank you very much thank you great to be here i know it's a last show for take a summer break for a month you got to give me a little time off it's been nerve-wracking lately uh fourth of july coming up and you know what this today it opened supergirl perfect for the fourth of july it was yeah big superhero another superhero movie opened this week but what's going on at washington uh deadpools oh we kid we kid the reflecting pool i'm tired of hearing about the goddamn reflecting pool i gotta say i don't really give a shit about the reflecting pool and i love america but i gotta admit we're the only place you could make a pool improved by pissing in it with this uh and you know you know it started out innocently enough i wasn't against the idea that we should spiffy up washington a little it needed a little spiffing up so they tried it with the pool uh whatever they whatever happened it you know what you don't happen next the algae then the pool was full of algae so then they put a fence around the pool i like that i for one i'm tired of algae coming into this country getting over that fence no i mean look we don't know what caused the problems in the pool trump says it's lunatic liberals that's not what he calls me but you know i did i was not in washington who vandalized it so now he's suing abc news for reporting falsely on the pool and abc says this is baseless outrageous and preposterous and how would you like us to make out the check uh i can't but uh but you know the problem is now there are dead ducks in the pool or possibly murdered by antifa i don't know but you know the pool is dragging down the president's approval ratings it's like a little in the low 30s now in the country and among independents 25 percent and zero percent with ducks and uh oh and of course the uh the other big headache of course is the ceasefire with iran not going perfectly well as ceasefires often don't iran hit a cargo ship yesterday and uh you know trump wants this war over he just you know he just really does you know we fired back a little but you know he's basically he said damage was done you know people make mistakes a month ago he was calling them deranged scumbags now it's let me finish deranged scumbags but very fine fanatics on both sides i'd say it's got to be tough negotiating this with whoever's doing that oh yeah it's the vice president he's here tonight it's got to be the tough job negotiating for this country in this war because last week when he was in switzerland talking about it with the iranians at the time president trump threatened to kill them he said you if the straight isn't open you won't have a country you won't make it back to your country fucking alive okay and then 80 minutes into the thing uh he said we're gonna blow the shit out of them and they walked out of the room so before jd vance left president trump took him aside and just let me know if there's anything i can do to hinder but now let's talk about the big earthquake on the left because this is big news in this country i don't know if you saw what happened in new york there were three candidates for this is the primary race they are going to win the election so they're going to be three democrats in congress these are mandami's people these are democratic socialists i think very different than the democratic party what happened is you know for years we've been asking young people to vote well now young people are voting and they're voting to abolish the police abolish prisons unlimited immigration so no cops no prisons no borders proving for sure that eating tide pods does cause brain damage and there's uh there's one candidate she will be a congressperson from new york's 13th district who the new york times asked her if someone murders someone randomly should they go to jail couldn't get her to say yes for that she says no more police ever at all ever she says our veterans are war criminals she said fuck kamala harris and joe biden is a rapist uh so there is a woke mind virus and i think it's a woke mind virus and i think it's a woke mind virus and i think it's a woke mind virus and i think it's a woke mind virus and i think we found patient zero yeah her name her name is doria lisa avila chevalier uh they call her dac uh she makes aoc look like lol times wtf but good news if you're a democrat with a nazi tattoo you're no longer the weird one she also says that the united states the country she's running to be a part of is occupied native land and says this country america is a fucking disgrace during the oath of office she's going to take a knee and and she's not too crazy about white girls she calls ugly colonizer women and she says uh black men and arab men fetishize ugly colonizer women uh to which the kardashians wrote back fuck you bitch all right we've got a great show we have senator rafael warlock here and larry wilmore is here but first up he is the 50th vice president of the united states an author of two number one best-selling books hillbilly elegy and the one that's out now communion finding my way back to faith katie mads our vice president come on not bad do i have the nicest crowd i'm sure it's the only applause i'll get but i'll take it i'm just glad you're talking to me you know i mean i say it every time when the republicans come here they take their beating like a man it's the people i vote for they're the ones who won't talk to me that's odd isn't it it is very odd i mean and i'd probably like this new woman who was elected to new york do you think she'll come on the show oh i know you want no i can't get aoc i can't get mandami i can't go and get kamala harris you know took me eight years to get obama anyway let's not talk about my problem and i promise this is going to be a lot easier than talking to the iranians Or even more, the view. The question is whether it's harder than the view. That's right. But look, you're negotiating for America. I'm rooting for America. So I want success here. But, you know, you came out of these meetings. I heard sort of the same thing. I've heard a lot of talk about progress and that. I've heard it so many times before. Why is this different? Why isn't it bullshit this time? Well, I'd say the most important thing, Bill, is that the people who judge whether the oil is actually flowing, they judge this as a success, right? So if you look at oil right now, it's back down to $73 a barrel, got up to $126 a barrel. So there's a signal that there's something real going on here. I think the second, Bill, is whether we make the final deal, because you have to remember this MOU is fundamentally, it says the straits are going to be open, the oil is going to flow. We're seeing that happen already. It's also a ceasefire, which, as you pointed out, is always going to be a little messy when you're dealing with the Iranians. But if we make the final deal, then great. If we don't make the final deal, their nuclear program is still destroyed. They're still much weaker as a country. So my attitude is America wins either way. But I do think that what the president has done is asked us to do something that, frankly, nobody in 47 years of dealing with the Iranians has done, which is offer them an opportunity to fundamentally transform how they behave with the West. They've been the largest state sponsor of terrorism basically since they began as a nation, or at least as an Islamic republic, 47 years ago. He's saying, look, if they're willing to change, we're willing to change too. If they're not willing to change, we still fundamentally have all the cards, and I think that's a good place for us to be. But their program isn't destroyed. Their nuclear program isn't destroyed. I mean, I don't know any of our objectives. And look, I said I. What part is not destroyed? Well, we didn't get in there. The whole thing was we have to get in there and see. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing this. Well, let me say, first of all, so a nuclear program, and I'm hardly a nuclear scientist. I'm a lowly politician. But the thing that you have to destroy is their ability to enrich uranium, which has been destroyed. You have to destroy their ability. Well, because you need functioning centrifuges that can actually spin, and we know that they're gone. We've got to get in there, and we've got to get the dust. And we didn't get in there, so how do we get the dust? So that's actually a separate question. So there's the highly enriched stockpile, which, by the way, was allowed to accumulate over 20 years of previous administrations. That enriched stockpile is something that we want to get. But, Bill, if we never get it and the president wants it, and we are going to get it, but if we never got it, it's buried deep underground and they don't have the ability to turn it into a nuclear weapon. So the program is functionally destroyed. We're just talking about can we set them back even further through these negotiations. Okay. I only have limited time with this, so I want to move on to other topics. I want to tell you what people have been saying to me. I tell them, you know, people get excited. Wow, you have the vice president on? I'm pretty impressed myself. I'm very excited about this. I had pence on. I've had both his vice president a couple of weeks ago. Pence was here. I'm killing it with the vice president. Okay. Yeah. Okay. What did you talk about with Mike Pence? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll? I don't know. No, I. He was a lot more human than I thought he. than I'd ever seen him. I even asked him to come on my podcast, Where I Get Stoned, and he was like, Maybe. So it was great. But here's what people. When I say you, here's what sticks in their craw. The number one issue. Immigration. Not immigration. We like it that you closed the border. That needed to be done. The people who are here, the way you treated. I'm talking about your administration. You weren't out there yourself. But ICE, all that shit. Too rough. Too mean. Too unnecessary. I think you go. I'm not telling you what to do. Okay? I'm just giving you some advice as a friend. Okay? And I'm not. I am. And I'm not saying. I'm not asking you to apologize. I don't like when people do that. I'm just saying you go a long way toward getting people who are just completely shut the door to you and your ministry, if you would just own that. That you guys went too far. You went too far, and you should own it like you did childless cat ladies. Whoa. Okay. So, here's the basic problem with that bill is you cannot do any deportations without law enforcement, and you can't do a law enforcement operation like that without having some situations that don't look good when they're recorded like that. I mean, let me give you, like, just one obvious example. Let's just set aside the immigration element of this, okay? If you take a guy who's committed murder and you go and arrest that guy, sometimes that person's going to resist arrest. Sometimes if you take a video of it and it's out of context and you don't appreciate why that person is being arrested in the first place, it looks pretty icky if you take that out-of-context video clip. And what I worry about is when people say you can't ever do immigration enforcement if it produces a bad video clip, what they're really saying is you can't ever actually do immigration enforcement. We had 12 million people come into the country, into the interior over the last four years, or I should say from 2021 to 2025. And we were elected with a mandate to get some of those people out of the United States of America. You can't do that easily. Law enforcement deporting people is never an easy process. So I appreciate your argument that we've gone too far, but we couldn't do nothing. And I don't think there was an easy way to do this. No, of course. Just there's a middle ground. See, the other thing that bothers us about stuff like that is that nothing ever lands in the middle, which is what I'm always trying to get people to do. I thought you were a crazy liberal. Because you don't watch the show. You should watch the show. I actually do watch the show. I laughed my ass off backstage. That was a good monologue. Even though you were making fun of me, I kind of liked it. Yeah. It was fair. Yeah. I know someone in your administration who watches the show. Because I always hear about it. Okay, you're right. The second lady, she's a big fan. The second lady's a big fan of Bill Maher. But what we hate is that the pendulum never lands in the middle. You're right. Biden did let in too many people. It just boggles the mind why he did that. But then it has to go all the way to the other side. Always. Nothing can ever land in the middle. Did they go too far? Probably in the Pentagon with DEI. Yes, and now Pete Hegseth is like firing everyone who's not whiter than an albino. No, he's not. Come on, Bill. It certainly looks that way. Well, Bill, this is. You've got to be. Nothing lands in the middle. I disagree with that. I think sometimes things do land right where they should. But just, you take this story about Pete Hegseth. Obviously, I'm biased. I like Pete. But if you look at the actual promotions that we've done, there have been a lot of people from all walks of life. There have been some high-profile people where he said, you know what, I don't think that they merited a promotion. But the idea that we're not promoting minorities in the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth, it's just not true. And I do think that sometimes your criticism is things don't land in the middle, and I understand that. Sometimes the problem is the media reports things in such a way where they actually obfuscate or conceal the truth rather than reporting what's actually going on. Of course they do. They all do. That's why you have to read both sides. Yeah, well, like, my recommendation is if you read a news story and it says something bad about me, you should disbelieve it. It's probably lying. Whereas if you read a news story that says something nice, that's not a matter like that. But, okay. But I'm, again, I'm just trying to help you with your issues. Because I'll tell you something. You, me, and a hundred friends. This is like political therapy here with Bill Barr. Because I'll tell you something that I don't think I've ever said, but this happened this week with the thing I'm sure you want to talk about. We're going to talk about on the panel with the Democratic Socialists. I'm actually here to talk about my book. I want everybody to find my book. I know, we're going to get to it. We're going to get to it. But it's good. It's called Communion. Available wherever books are sold. But just one more thing about this. Now we'll get to the book. Okay. Okay. Like, if this is where the Democratic Party is going, where this Democratic Socialist, this obsession with Israel, with the Jew hating, with they don't believe in capitalism, no prisons. If this is where they're going, my vote is in play. Okay. I like to hear that. It actually always has been. I just, every year, I don't make my decision by who has the right or who has an R or a D. I actually always came to the conclusion that the Democrat was probably better. Sure. And voted for them. Okay. And Trump can't run again and he'd be a little too exciting for me anyway. So, it's either going to be you or Rubio. Here's my deal breaker for your side. Okay. Okay. Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes that an election can be. Either we win or they cheated. That shit has to stop. And the person who. And that means the person who has to stop it would be you or Marco. Can you tell me you will do that? Will you bring us back to the middle, at least on that, where we concede elections, where it's not either one of those two options? Okay, Bill. So, this is where I'm probably going to lose you here. But here's. That happened about eight minutes ago. Oh, yeah. Look, I don't think that we should not concede elections, but I don't think that's what's going on. I think that if you go back, if you go back to the president's core argument, he was making an argument about problems that existed in 2020. And here's the problem that I'm most focused on. The president and I have talked a lot about this, and I think we share a perspective here. But set to the side the stuff that really gets you and your audience very angry about whether the count was legitimate in Georgia or Pennsylvania or any of these other states. Is it true that large technology companies, some of whom have financial interests that exist outside the United States of America, were they censoring information in the run up to an election? And set to the side, again, the Georgia stuff. That was litigated. Dominion. The Fox News paid us. I'm not. I'm actually I'm trying to make the more the more middle ground argument here. The biggest criticism I had of the 2020 election is that you had technology companies that were quite literally censoring negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right. So in a fundamental sense, like if the First Amendment says that we have a free and open debate and then the American people judge based on that free and open debate, the sense in which I think the election in 2020 was rigged, I'm sorry, is that you had technology. You had technology companies that were putting their thumb on the scale in a way that completely obliterated the real open exchange of ideas. Now, by the way, it didn't happen in 2024, but it happened in 2020 and it was a problem. Well, you're going to get a big pat on the back and you go back to the White House. Let's talk about your book. I mean, I think it's very interesting because, you know, I always want to talk about what people have in common. I used to be Catholic. You're a Catholic now. That's right. You used to be an atheist. I'm an atheist now. So we've been over to the same glance. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, you were born a Baptist. This is about your spiritual journey. That's right. Which is really interesting. And by the way, very, very personal. Yeah. It reminded me a little of Gavin Newsom. He has a book here and I was very surprised. It didn't look like his book. Did you read his book? People bought my book. That's the difference between. Sorry. Was that mean? I'm just saying. That's fine. Well, I'm just saying politicians are getting a lot more real when they write. You know, it's not like that old kind of book. You know, and it's about you're moving toward the. I'm just asking why the Catholics? Why go? I didn't. I didn't have a good experience with them. Why? Why did you? You could have went Hindu. Your wife's a Hindu. Well, we we should talk about that, Bill, in a longer setting, not just, you know, two minutes in front of the audience. Do the podcast. OK. All right. We'll do the podcast. We'll get down. I'm not going to smoke weed, though. I don't want to ruin my political career. We don't make the guess. But I, I mean, here here's let me try to answer that question. OK, so first of all, I think that there is a core truth of the Catholic or the Christian faith that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that all people need grace. OK, but that fundamental truth that I believe in, I didn't land there. I didn't start there. What I saw was what I would call echoes of that truth in a lot of the people who live their lives in very, very charitable and good ways. But I think with Catholicism in particular, what's interesting about it, because I meet a lot of young Catholic converts, is they start to discover that truth because they're attracted to the beauty and the stability of it. I think people are craving in a modern world where we build ugly buildings and everything is constantly changing and social networks have changed. Even how, you know. Men and women date one another. I think that people are craving something that is more stable and that calls us to something more beautiful. And I think that was one of the ways that I found Christianity. Now, it's interesting because I've actually gotten criticisms. You know, one of the things I talk about in the book is I was a striver. And I think that was very bad. I think it's it's it's it's wrong to be ambitious for ambition's sake. If you want to be ambitious, you should be trying to accomplish something meaningful. And it was my Christian faith. That encouraged me to actually worry about things that mattered, like being a good husband, being a good dad, being a good community member. Now, I get criticism from some Christians who say, well, you know, that that might be true. But then you've got to talk about Jesus, too. But I think my point is that I talk about in the book available wherever bookstores are sold. Again, it is that like I started seeing refractions of the truth of the Christian gospel. And that got me on a pathway. To where I eventually accepted the truth that Jesus Christ was the son of God. But I think all of us have our own path. You obviously have yours, but it's not over yet, man. So I still have hope for you. Thank you. I appreciate that you have hope for me. And I for you. Vice President J.D. Vance. Thank you, Paul. I'll see you soon. All right. Meet our panel. Hello. All right. Here's an Emmy award winning comedian. Right. My friend, Larry Wilmore is over here. And he is Democratic senator from Georgia, senior pastor at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church and author of the bestselling book, The Crooked Places Made Straight Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America. Senator Raphael Warnock. Great to see you. All right. I want to talk about stuff in your book to start this off. Sure. Because it certainly is interesting considering some of the things that have happened in the news this week. I'm talking about what we were talking about with the vice president. Some of these people who have just got elected as Democratic socialists, and I assume you are not a Democratic socialist, that you're more of a Democrat. Is that correct? I'm a Democrat. Okay. They want to abolish prisons. I mean, they say it outright. Abolish the police. Abolish prisons. I don't know how society could run that way. I don't think that's where you are. But a lot of the book is devoted to this issue of mass incarceration. So as I was saying to the vice president, nothing ever lands in the middle. What is the appropriate place where we should land with, I hope we're not for no prisons and no police, because, you know, that's anarchy, and what's going on in the country presently? Well, good to be with you. I'm senior pastor of Ebenezer in Atlanta. But I actually lived in New York for 10 years. I went to seminary there. And I, you know, was on staff at a church. And those communities represented by, assuming the new congresswoman. If you talk to folks in those communities, they don't want to abolish the police. No, I know. They've had their share of issues with the police. We know the whole sad spectacle of stop and frisk. When I was a student at Union Theological Seminary, one of my classmates was thrown up against the wall late one night. Folks jumped out of an unmarked car. We know the story. We've heard it time and time again. So we've got to address these issues. Over the course of the last several decades, the United States of America, the land of the free, has become the mass incarceration capital of the world. We've made a set of public policy choices that have made us no safer. We put more people in prison than any other country. We put more people in prison than any nation on the planet. We put a greater percentage of our people in prison. Yeah, the numbers are amazing. Than any nation on the planet. And I've lived this personally. My brother went through this, as I talked about in my book. And so it's something that I think a lot about, and we've got to fix it. Yeah. I mean, the numbers from the 1960s through the 2000s, the incarceration rate went up 600%. Two million people we have. I didn't realize this. We have over 1,500 state prisons, almost 100 federal prisons. We have 3,000 local prisons. Local jails, 1,200 juvenile correctional facilities, immigration detention centers, Indian County jails. This place has a lot of jails. There's a lot of ways to go to jail in America. It's really what it comes down to. Okay. Well, unless you're in the Oval Office. But. Oh! Man. Put those shots in, huh, Larry? He brings the heat. I'm a pastor. My business is truth-telling. I know. I appreciate it. You keep it 100. I just started reading your book. I was reading Hillbilly Elegy to get ready for this, so I apologize. I was reading the wrong book. But mass incarceration, you know, it's one of those things. You're right, Bill. How do you talk about an issue like that? You know, focusing on the way. Well, one side of it is one way to talk about it, but then there's the other side of it. Why is so much crime even happening right now? Like, what's going on in our culture? Like, why are people falling down this hole of maybe hopelessness or feeling like there's no future for them where they have, you know. One of the issues is assuming that people who are incarcerated don't belong there or that they didn't commit crimes. That's not necessarily true. Right. You know, both things can be true. There can be prison abuse, and there can be people who have done some really bad things. What do you do with these people? You know, and I don't think the answer is necessarily that they should be out on the streets. I mean, my personal story is my nephew was shot. He was 22 years old, shot in the back of the head. still hasn't been solved. I don't know where that person is, but I know where he should be. He should be in one of two places. One of them is prison, and we know where the other place is. Sorry, Pastor, but we know where the other place is. Right? Stay in your lane. Yeah, yeah. Hey, he came in my lane, Bill. He came in my lane first. All right. So it's a complicated issue. There are many sides to it. These communities are both under-policed and over-policed at the same time. So you've got a lot of unsolved murders. Sure. That's the story of your nephew. And at the same time, nonviolent, drug-related offenses, sending lots of people to prison. We could choose to invest, for example, in child care rather than jail care. The kids that we neglect from zero to four are the folks who end up in our prisons. And so I think we need what Dr. King called a renewal of our values to get us into a different place. Okay. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. 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So what is your impression? What is your impression of what happened this week with the Democratic Socialists being elected? I'd like to, I mean, I'm sure you know James Carville. This is, what? What? No, it's just, he makes me laugh just thinking about it. There's the man who missed his calling. What? Come here to me again. Yeah, he is very funny. Very funny. Right, and he's also very wise, I think, about, I mean, this is what he said. He was talking about this Derizy-Liza-Avillier-Chevalier, she said, he says, she has attacked in the interracial relationships, which is true, she doesn't like race mixing, formerly the position of the Ku Klux Klan, but now this is the far left. I believe it's still the position of the Ku Klux Klan, right? Yes, it is. Yes, you're right. But now it's apparently also the position of the far left. Okay, he says she's against that, she's against the American flag. He said, lady, I ain't in the same party as you. He said, Democrats, we're a coalition, we're a big tent, and there's just some shit I can't be in the same tent with. I'm done. I'm not in that fucking political party. Okay, so Tucker Carlson has quit the Republicans, and James Carville has quit the Democrats. WTF, ref. What's going on? Really? Well, Bill, my, my, you know, the far left, they always take things too far. The far right, they just make shit up. That's the difference between the far left and the far right. You know it's the far right if they're making shit up, and you know it's the far left if they just take things too far, you know? Because there's always well-meaning underneath some of these things, but, and I don't know why things have to go to the extreme in order to get something done. That doesn't make sense to me. And she's in a very important seat right now. That was Adam Clayton Powell's seat for a long time, you know? And after him, Charlie Rangel, as you know. And, and I think recently, the head of the Hispanic caucus for the Democrats in Congress. I mean, there's some serious people. It's a very important seat. And the issues that come out of that seat, historically, have been, you know, many of them have been black-centered issues, and have been around affordability, and, you know, housing, and a lot of the same issues that we're facing today. But there was more of a practical approach that, and there was a humility about some of this takes time, you know? And it takes grit, and it takes a lot of things to get things done. But, you know. Okay. Well, listen, whenever we take a month off, we do something here on, what? You're laughing at me like that. No, I love what's coming up. I know. You know me too well, Larry. I know. I'm anticipating it. It's like an old married couple between us at this point. No, we do future headlines, because we're not off. People get the news from our show. So we have to actually predict the headlines that are going to happen. Would you like to hear them first? We will be back on July 31st. Until then, these are the headlines you will read. President changes American flag colors to red, white, blue, and gold. I don't know what you're talking about. Graham Plattner discovers tattoo that covers Nazi tattoo also a Nazi tattoo. In new Iran deal, U.S. agrees to dismantle its nuclear program. Pride flag runs out of colors in the visible spectrum. AI becomes fully human, immediately begins wasting life on social media. Trump-Newsom tensions boil over during chance encounter at hair salon. Bill Maher turns prestigious Mark Twain prize into bomb. It's inevitable. Okay. So let me go back to what we just summed up, because we didn't really get to what the heart of the issue, I think, is with this new crowd in the Democratic Party, and that is Israel. They are obsessed with Israel. It's a litmus test. I'd like to quote you. You once said, first of all, I stand with Israel, which I appreciate. You said, I wholeheartedly and unabashedly echo Dr. King's declaration that Israel's right to exist as a state in security is incontestable. Claims that I believe Israel is an apartheid state are patently false. Thank you, first of all. It says to me. You're quoting Dr. King. It says to me this is becoming not at all the party of Obama or Martin Luther King. I don't think Obama could have won one of these races in New York that was just there. I mean, so for all the people who are always, oh, gosh, you know, you changed. Did I? Was it really me and these other people? Who, you know, if you don't see that this is a fundamental change, I don't get it. And why do you think they are so obsessed with Israel? Well, I think, you know, there's a lot of frustration that people are feeling. And it's. Let me say, first of all, Israel is our ally. And allies and friends can have honest conversation. Right. And real debate about what's going on. And, you know, we're at a. As people are witnessing what's happening under Netanyahu, there's a lot of people in Israel. He's not terribly popular. No, he isn't. Who are not comfortable with what's happening. There is an acronym in Gaza, and it's a terrible way to start. Your life, it's W-C-N-S-F. Wounded child, no surviving family. You can't look away from that. You've got to look at it. No, but you have to look at who caused it. Yeah, and at the same time. Who caused that? You have to. Because they have tunnels, which are shelters, which they didn't put any of their people in. You have to hold everybody accountable. And as a pastor, my North Star is a systemic. It's a sustainable peace in Israel that is at a nation that's at peace with its neighbors. I think at the end of the day, Israeli mothers, Palestinian mothers want the same thing. They want to be able to put their children to bed at night for them to be safe and to awaken in a world that embraces all of them. And I think these extremes are not helpful. We've got to have honest conversation. But you. I'm sorry, I think that's a false equivalency. I think there's a lot more extremism on one side. I mean, there's a woman, Parasite. to Ahmadi. She is Iranian. She got 74 lashes. 74 lashes because she sang. She's a singer. She sang without a headscarf on. So, let's not forget who the other side is. I mean, do you get 74 lashes for singing without a headscarf in Israel? No, you don't. You just don't. It's just not a privilege. I don't want to judge I don't want to judge Israelis or Palestinian people by the most extreme voices among their people. I think most people want peace. There's 7 million Israelis, 7 million Palestinian folks there in that same region. It's a very small area. We've got to figure out a way that leads to a two-state solution where both communities can live in peace with each other. Well, again. I've been very consistent. In condemning. I've had to take positions on stages, including the DNC, standing up for children in Gaza and at the same time, standing up for Israel's right to exist and to live at peace with its neighbors. This idea that. I think that's the false choice. You've got to choose one or the other. Well, but it's also not true that both sides want a two-state solution equally. One side's beginning negotiating position is you all die. And from the river to the sea. From the river to the sea, is. We have to condemn that idea. Okay, great. Whoever's saying it, we have to condemn it. Yeah. Well, one side is saying it. Not two sides, but. I was going to say, this is one of those really complicated situations, because for a lot of Americans, you know, it's almost what I like to call like a war by proxy or caused by proxy, because they're not directly involved. You know, we're not sending people over there who are involved in it, so people are forced to take sides. They're not even forced to take sides, or maybe they're. They take sides just from what they see, you know, and when you see. What they see on TikTok. Correct. Right. Or wherever they get it, you know. Well, that's as much as they know about it. Yeah. But they're very powerful. There's very powerful images, especially when you see images of war and people dying and children and all those types of things, you know. There has to be an approach that involves a humane approach to a lot of this stuff. And a lot of things are going to have to be re-evaluated. It's kind of, you know, the world we're living in right now. But man, this is one of those things. First of all, I'm completely out of my depth with both of you two on this particular issue. I'm trying to bring. Well, okay. But just to bring it back to the democratic socialists, they do seem to want to live in a fantasy world. They imagine that they would be happier in a world without police, living under Islamic law. I mean, the level of stupid that that is, I can't even describe. Yeah. And I'm telling you. Well, it's. I, um. I live in a world and work in Washington, so I see a lot of stupidity everywhere. I'm sure you do. Well, before these folks got there. Right. And so, it is the reason why I try to focus on the people. I mean, that's, you know, as a pastor, I'm usually. Which stupidity do you want to vote for? That's the real question coming up. Yeah. People are deeply frustrated. I mean, we are seeing an increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots in our country. People in these communities are struggling, trying to figure out how they're going to pay for their groceries, how they're going to pay for housing, how they're going to pay for utility bills. And they feel like neither party is speaking to that. And so, every now and then, you know, you. They want to shake it up, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left. But what is clear is that where we've been is not working. And people feel that. Young people feel it in their gut. And so, you know, even as we engage them, I think we do a dangerous thing when we slam the door. We've got to listen to each other. And so, I don't want to be dismissive. Even of those who I disagree with deeply. I think the issue is, how do we get to a place where we are? I agree. All right. Before we run out of time, let's talk about another issue that's very important in your terrific book here. And that is voting. Because, I mean, this was in the news again this week. Trump, they. The Congress did something they haven't done in a long time. Their job. They. They passed. They passed a law. Great. Amen. Amen. That's what I say. They passed a law. A housing bill. A good housing bill. That's one of the big issues in this country. There's not enough housing. Absolutely. And it's too expensive. And they did something about it. Right. And Trump would not sign it, at least as of now. Maybe he has at this point. They were negotiating. But. And I think if he doesn't, it may just. You know the procedure better than I do. It'll just automatically pass or something. Yeah, I think it's passable. I help write the bill. We passed a housing bill out of the banking and housing committee. Every Democrat and every Republican on that committee that I'm a member of voted for it. Amazing. One of the provisions in that bill caps or stops private equity from swooping in the communities. We have a big problem around this in Atlanta. And just buying up. Buying up all the housing stock. So you got just ordinary families, single mothers trying to buy a home. And their competition is a big corporation. Right. Right. And so my provision stops that. There are other great provisions in the bill. If you get an appraisal you think it's too low, you have some recourse to challenge that. And the president had a chance to stand there with members of Congress. Right. Take credit for a bill he did little to create. And instead he made it again about himself. Well, again, what he made it about is the SAVE Act. He's not going to sign it because, as always, everything is sort of transactional. He wants this SAVE Act. Let me tell you what the SAVE Act. This is about voting. This is a very important issue in your book. No, very important. And the country, because things have changed a lot. The Supreme Court voted on the Voting Rights Act, the gerrymandering. I mean, just in the time of a couple of months ago, the districts have changed. Terrible. Okay. Here's what the SAVE Act says. Every American will have to have a. go to the office somewhere, the prefect's office, I assume, and appear in person with documentation, a birth certificate, photo ID, birth certificate and a passport, and a photo ID. It's estimated over 21 million Americans lack these, as we said here. Right. Nearly half of black Americans under 30 do not have ID with their current name and address. So what is your reaction to this? That's more of a strategy. I want to be clear, though. What? Well, it's not just ID. You need a birth certificate. Right. To register to vote, you've got to go find your birth certificate. And if you. or a passport. Most Americans don't have a passport. And if you're a married woman and your name on your birth certificate is different from your birth certificate, if the name is different on your birth certificate and your marriage certificate, you've got to figure out how to reconcile those things. All of these hoops just to register to vote, this is not a voter ID bill. It's a voter suppression bill because Trump knows that his presidency is an abject failure. He does not want people to vote. Well, and what's ironic about this bill, this is the irony of it all, is that he's trying to push out of the system a lot of people in the lower classes who probably voted for him. You know, there's a lot of people who can't afford these things because they don't have any money. They can't, you know, it costs money and time. But by saying it costs money, maybe they have to take time off from work or whatever it is. But a lot of the people in this class voted for Donald Trump. You know, you're alienating a lot of your own voters. But then he wouldn't kick 15 million of them off their health care, cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid, cut SNAP. And so I don't think he wants people to show up. They think that their fortunes are better if fewer people show up to vote. Why don't people have a birth certificate? Well, sometimes if you don't have a birth certificate in your house, if you've never had it, then it has to, you have to get it from somewhere. So you have to hope that there's a physical record. But don't you get one when you're born? Somebody. Yeah, but it may not have stayed with you. Maybe your parents have it. Maybe they lost it. People's, look, we just had fires in Altadena. People lost personal records, you know. Right. It's not always easy to replace those in a certain amount of time, you know. I mean, literally, literally, this bill, the so-called SAVE Act, should be renamed Your Driver's License Is Not Good Enough. I mean, that's, that's, no, that's what it's, that's what it is. And we have real ideas now. We have real ideas. Yeah, but, so, yeah, so, so in very, in very few states will your driver's license work. There are few states where that will work. So, your driver's license is not good enough. They don't want people to vote. Are you going to run for president? I understand that the local HOA is looking for a president. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll see you on the hustings. Time for New Rules, everybody. New Rules. Okay. New Rule. Everyone must tip their hat to Madonna for continuing to put fantastic music out into the world at her age, which will hopefully soften the blow when we also tell her, but the sex symbol days are over. Trust me, Madge, this cover doesn't say, I'm crawling toward you in an alluring way. It says, I've fallen and I can't get up. New Rule, and I'm sorry, but this cannot be the guy Trump hired to fix the reflecting pool. Except that it is. We'll be right back. His name is John Cafaro, and he's a Trump donor who got a no-bid contract. You know what? Forget all that. I just have one question for this lady who chose to take a picture with him. You know there are other guys who have money, right? No rule. Get your dog's asshole off the tray table. I don't care if he is your certified service animal. There's a thing called hygiene, and some people have to snort cocaine on this flight. No rule. Whoever's considering awarding the world record for longest continuous speech to Mississippi pastor Matt Olson, who delivered a sermon lasting 96 hours, has to admit they never asked their wife after a glass of wine, how was your day? Not to diminish your feat, Pastor Olson, but at least you allowed bathroom breaks. No rule. Someone has to ask the guy at a California campground who dropped his sunglasses into a toilet, tried to retrieve them, fell down into the toilet, and had to be rescued by firefighters, how mad were you when you finally got back to the campsite and somebody said, what'd you do, fall in? And finally, new rule, let's all give it up for soccer being the greatest sport. No, no, not the game itself. That sucks. I mean, there's more scoring at a Star Trek convention. But. But I am loving that the World Cup, has brought to our shores all these people who are doing Americans the service of reminding us, just when we needed it on our big 250 birthday, that actually, this place is kind of awesome. And, uh, yes, I know, how dare I, how privileged, when there are so many problems and threats and people left behind. All true. I could give you the statistics where we are not good enough. And have done so many times. Infant mortality rate, 54th in the world. Women in government, 85th. Overdose deaths, lack of health insurance. Yes, many problems. But that's because the name of our country is America, not Utopia. And the appropriate comparison isn't to the Eden you might imagine, it's to every other place on Earth. We can't be more perfect than what's in your mind. We can only be more perfect than Belgium. Which I bet has nicer airports, but trust me, has its own problems. And I never saw anyone getting ecstatic about being there. But that's exactly what I've been seeing here for the last month. Social media flooded with videos of slack-jawed soccer tourists wandering around America, positively gushing about everything we take for granted. Reminding us what America looks like from the outside. Not through the lens of some influencer explaining why watering your lawns, is violence. Just regular people looking around and saying, wow, these people live like rock stars. Look at this Japanese guy trying Texas barbecue. Wow. Amazing! I love it! Last time he was that excited, he was rubbing himself against a stranger on the subway. British people are walking through Costco like they're touring the Vatican on mushrooms. One European guy said, this is the biggest tourist attraction I can have as a European. It's like a museum. He was talking about Walmart. True. I swear. Our comfort foods, supermarkets, big box stores, stadiums, they're blowing their minds. You can buy a ceramic beaver wearing sunglasses. Fuck yeah, you can. And. And you can buy mayonnaise by the gallon. This guy can't believe pizza comes in a size this large. 1.26 kilos of pizza. Ha, ha, ha. Wait until they see our asses. Yeah! American food is insane, said another one. Tried a hot dog today. American delicacy. And oh my God, why does the sausage taste so good? Well, it's the rat hair, but we just know how to do it. We know how to do it. Listen to this. There are thousands of people from countries we think of as prosperous and advanced who have come here and are now saying they can no longer go on in life if they can't get ranch dressing. One woman. One woman from Sweden said, why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack? Because it's not. Your crack must suck. Really, I never heard anyone say, this crack is like eating ranch. But plainly, plainly, we have a lot of things here we assumed everyone has, and they don't. They came here for soccer, and can't believe you can watch it while having a beer. Yeah, they don't have that in Europe. Let that sink in. In the paradise you think the rest of the world is, they can't drink beer in public without beating the shit out of each other. And have you seen Europeans reacting to air conditioning? Like it's some exotic experimental technology? Every summer, they're sitting in a 400-year-old stone building sweating through their Speedo underwear as opposed to America, where we ask the question, what if my living room didn't cause heat stroke? Here's my favorite foreign visitor testimony from this month. I feel like I've been lied to my entire life about America. This beach is insane. Like, just as good as Australian beaches. But if you log on to the news, everything's bad. Everything's terrible. It's not. It's absolutely fucking amazing. Thank you for that perspective, Australian dude who probably just stole somebody's American girlfriend. There actually are some good things about us. Even with all the ice nonsense, we have more immigrants than the next four countries combined. We have to fight for it, but still have freedom of speech and assembly and trial by jury. And even if you're found guilty, you can still ask a Kardashian to get you a pardon. Other countries struggle just to have water. Here, we make it put on a show. In the desert, no less. We have drive-thrus for both church and sex toys. That's right. You can buy a dildo, then ask the Lord to forgive you for it without ever leaving your car. We have the strongest intellectual property, the most innovative R&D, the highest GDP, the most valuable companies, and the most trillionaire. Now look, maybe it's a coincidence, but I think it's something in the American system and character that we have the highest number of Nobel Prize winners and invented the light bulb, the telephone, the smartphone, the airplane, personal computers, and the party-sized bag of extra-flamin' hot cheetah. Plus, you can believe in whatever crazy religion you want here, and 24 states have legal weed, and our pop stars can juggle knives. Happy Fourth, everybody, and have a great month of July. We'll see you back here on July 31st. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Larry Wilmore, Senator Raphael Warnock, and Vice President J.D. Vance. Thank you, folks. Oh, Bob Brandon drops every Monday, or listen to him wherever he gets in on it. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com. Endless summer escapes start here. Beat the heat. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at $50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more. Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving, or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, the Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. Shop Labor Day savings at the Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving.