Ep. #741: Terry Bradshaw, Max Brooks, Sarah Longwell

FanDuel is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are. Including these places. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Real Time with Bill Maher. Glad you're in a good mood. It's a somber day. This is the anniversary of one of the most important events in American history. This is the 25th anniversary when we were attacked. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There were ceremonies commemorating it in New York. Four ex-presidents went. Trump and Pete Hegseth went to the Pentagon, which was also attacked. Where Trump said, we will never forget who attacked us on this day. Canada. Canada. And Pete Hegseth, he was even more mad about it. He said, these terrorists tried to destroy the Pentagon, and that is my job. Oh, it was a very bizarre week, I thought, in politics. First of all, we found out that AI is going to kill us all, because I've been saying. But we'll get to that on panel. We've got hours to live. And in the midst of that, and on the two days when the NFL kicked off their season, Trump decided to have a midterm convention, which, by the way, is not a thing. We don't do that. Okay. But he wanted to assure the voters, his voters, that with him as president, and both houses, you know, a Republican majority, everything people were worrying about, inflation, affordability, corruption, the war, would be solved. Which would be a great selling point. Except, that's what we have now. And he said the affordability crisis is fake. Fake. You're not paying more for beef. That cow is lying. But listen. He has a solution. To the affordability crisis. He listed a lot of new proposals, and then just went, "You know what? Fuck it, I'll give you five grand." That's it. That was the big take from the convention. The midterm convention. That's really the solution we have. If you vote Republicans in, the government will hand out to everyone $5,000. You know, to fight socialism. I gotta say, in a country that is already haves and have-nots, this is a little bit of a scattershot approach. To get the money, all you have to do is just be an American adult and be alive. So, uh, Mitch McConnell, your move. Oh, we kid. We kid with love. And mind you, mind you, the point of this convention, was to show what great shape the Republican Party is in. And then the big idea was, "I'll give you five grand." You know the part of the movie where the crackhead is so desperate, he says, "I'll suck your dick for a dollar"? It's like that, but in politics. Five grand for everybody! Makes you kind of miss the innocent days when we bribed him. And I thought this was really, on top of all this, kind of weird. He's now saying that if the five grand doesn't move the polls, he'll take everybody furniture shopping? Oh, no one remembers that. I'll tell you later. And this really happened this week in America, which used to be a real country. Uh. At the convention, he made everybody put their hand up and do a new Pledge of Allegiance. I brought it word for word because I just don't want to. This is the President of the United States, and this is what he had people say. "I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States "that loves us so much that he can't even breathe. "that I will go out with my family, my friends. "I'll do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not. "I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do. "with liberty and justice for all." I. I got nothing anymore. I. And, of course. Of course, Trump had to claim that the convention hall was packed, even though, you know, if you ignored the empty seats, yes, it did look packed. Of course, you went against football? You went against the opening two nights of football? Wow! The one thing that people still watch on television? On. Trump's convention on Fox News got less than what Hannity and Gutfeld get on a regular night. And I'm the low ratings dummy? And. And here's an interesting sidelight to the story in Dallas that we could mention was Grindr, which I'm sure you know is the. Apparently, you know really well. Well, yes, it's the gay hookup app. And it crashed. in Dallas while the Republicans were there. Now. I am. I am not making any insinuations about whether that's a coincidence or not, but I will say this: The most popular prostitute name that night was Big Beautiful Bill. So. You make about it what you will. And if you want to look to the future about this, the convention did look a bit of a coronation for Vice President J.D. Vance. He made a speech. He was interrupted by a protester waving an American flag. And he came back with, "If you love Mexico so much, why don't you get your ass over there?" And the guy said, "I would, but I can't afford gas." All right. What a great show. We have Sarah Longwell and Max Brooks are here. But first up. Oh, my gosh. A four-time Super Bowl champion, Pro Football Hall of Famer, whose new book, "Looking for Terry: A Memoir," comes out October 13. Terry Bradshaw. There he is. The one, the only. The greatest. How are you? How's it going, man? Oh, what a great pleasure to meet you. Such a big fan. Thank you, Terry. Thank you. Yes, Terry. I hope I didn't overdress. No, no. Comfy? Comfy? I remember that time you came out of the "Tonight Show" with your fly down, so I was. As long as it was up. When I did that show, I asked, "Could I do stand-up?" And Jay said, "Yeah, 'cause, see, Jay do it all the time. You do it." I said, "You know, can I do stand-up?" He says, "I'll give you three minutes." And so I went out there, and the whole time I'm telling jokes, my fly's open, and they're laughing at my fly being open. And I turn around to tell him, "I'm killing it!" And he's got a sign. He's holding a sign saying, "Your fly is open." So much for that. See, this is the guy I always see on TV. The energy. How old are you now? Seventy-eight. Look at the energy in this guy. I mean, and your book, a fantastic book. Thank you. I mean, it's your second one you've written, and it's really a lot deeper because it goes into a lot of things in your life that we didn't know about you. I mean, the theme of the book is kind of the person America knows is not exactly who you really are. What if I like the other guy? What if I like the person America knows? Well, the people, the guy that you see on television, that's me. I just don't go around talking about depression and divorces and things of that nature that are very upsetting to me. So I don't talk about those things. I would rather make people laugh or have a smile on my face because when I do the Fox show coming up Sunday, I know the people have worked all week really hard trying to pay me gas bill, trying to buy groceries and they're stressed out. My job is not to go in there and beat this NFL to death. My job is to say, hey, sit back and enjoy yourself. Let me entertain you. And that's kind of the way I do it. But it is interesting that, I mean, I've been watching you on the NFL since 1980. When you first started as a broadcaster? Yeah, I started in 83 full-time. Okay. Well, I've never once seen you when you weren't on your game, up, happy. And what I find out from the book is at times you were actually quite depressed. I mean, that's not exactly the way every generation would. Well, here's the thing, Bill. Depression doesn't rob you. You can't control. I can be in front of this beautiful audience and have the most miserable day of my life, but when I come out here, I'm going to. My job is to entertain them and let them see Joe be all happy. You can do that. Right. You can do that. Well, you can do it. Not everybody can. I can do it. No, no. Listen, even though I've been diagnosed clinically depressed for years and took medicines, the key for me was really just going to rehab. Rehab. I went to therapists for three years, and that was really the key for me was the understanding. You know, I got a problem, but I took it as a personal problem because I thought, oh, my God, I'm really doing something wrong to be clinically depressed, and I don't want to be a mugshot, because people, you see, mugshot celebrities, they all say, well, I've been doing drugs, and I was on alcohol, but I'm clinically depressed, and you see the mugshot, and you go, yeah, I saw that mugshot. I'd be depressed, too. It's pretty bad, you know? So I fight hard. I fight hard. I'm a happy guy, so I fight hard to stay happy. And do you think depression came because of CTE? I mean, that's. I don't have CTE because I'm not dead yet, and that's when they'll find out. Right. But a lot of players. Right. players, too. Right. I mean, this is brain injury from. Exactly. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, you took hits that no quarterback today takes. It was a different game in the 70s. Exactly. That's why I'm against, like, comparing statistics. You cannot. You can't. As great as the quarterbacks are today, they don't. And I'm glad that they protect them more, but they just did not live in the world. But don't sit here and tell me that they're better than we were in the 70s or the 60s because they didn't play under the same rules where you got slapped on the face. That's what I'm saying. body slammed. Yeah, yeah. and knocked all over the place, and you couldn't throw. They played bump and run. You couldn't just stand back there and throw it all. Oh, he's the greatest player to ever play. No, he isn't the greatest player. He's maybe the greatest of his decade, but not ever. I don't ever use ever. It's just not. It's not fair. I just used it, didn't I? No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. I agree. Okay. Yeah. No, no. I mean, if you're. I mean, on the other hand, because of instant replay, you have a lot of completions that they would have taken away, right? On the other hand? You think so? Yeah. Right? Now we have high def. We have where we can. Where we have 20 tape machines, 30 cameras. Let's slow it down. We're even under the ball where they fall down, and we got in slow mo. Ah! Oh, my God! That looks like his jersey moved! And they go, flag! I know. I hate that. I can't. I can't. I don't know. I don't know. What are y'all getting? 5,000 to be here? Everybody getting 5 grand to be here? Thank you. I, um. I have a hard time with that. I do, too. And the minute. The minute an old guy like me says anything about the current players or anything critical of them, pooh, boy, you're just. Oh, fuck that. Wrong is wrong. Wrong is wrong. I agree. It's just that they've just made the game too analytical, and, uh. What made the game great, Bill, wasn't the fact that we have a perfect game, which is what they're trying to get. What made it great was collision and pass interference and bad calls and the fans being mad. And the artistry. Like this. Look. Yeah. And my toe, like it is! Yes. Yeah! And the artistry of an amazing play. And sometimes a guy makes an amazing play. A catch you can't believe. And you're right. It wiggles this much as he's clutching it. And I want to say, just have a rule. Close enough. Yeah. Okay? Close enough. It was close enough. I can go back and look at, uh. several pass catches that were made, but now it's the ground can't cause the fumble. The ground caused the fumble. He didn't have two feet and toe tap. Yes, he did. No, he didn't. And they have all these cameras, and he's. Even with the cameras and the tape machines now, they still screw it up. You know? They still screw it up. I don't believe in a perfect game. I think I am. I watched that Ram game last night, and that was like the worst preseason game I've ever seen. Was that bad? That was bad. See, so. But that goes back to a rule that you don't want your starters to get hurt, so you don't play them. So what happened last night, you saw the Rams play their first preseason game with their starters. And they looked like it. They won't play like that all year, but they looked like it. I am so against. I don't like to hear when Brady's the best that ever played. Because he won seven Super Bowls. I won four. But. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I defend my decade, all right? But when they say he's the best ever, and I'm going, well, he. That's 4-0. Montana followed me. He was 4-0. Then Tom came. Tom was 7-1. Three. Seven minus three is four. Four, four, four. There you go. There you are. Hey, you didn't think I knew general math, did you? No, I was going to say it. And they call you dumb. No. You're not dumb. I mean, nobody who plays quarterback and is the most elite position in all of sports. You can't be dumb to play. I mean, most players. I mean, it is obviously a physical game, and it's. It's much more. Most players are not dumb. Well, Gronkowski, he's dumb, right? No, I'm not. No, I'm kidding. He might be. You know, he was recruited by all the Ivy Leagues. He's a very smart guy. That's what I said. Anyway, um. But you're. I'm agreeing with you because Tom Brady is awesome, but again, he did not have to take the heat. Now they have this thing, the blue tent that you go into. You would have lived in the blue tent. You would have had a kitchenette. In the blue tent. Really, right? I mean, now. You got hurt, but back in my era, quarterbacks were respected and admired by their team and by opponents because they said, hey, this guy's tough. He gets hurt, he'll be back in the game. You know, unless you got a broken bone or something where you can't move or a knee, but you're back in the game. And growing up, the mentality that I had, which was, given to me by the coaching staff that I had, was that you got to play hurt. And so you played hurt, and then if they could shoot you up, give you a shot, then you wouldn't. And I remember one year, I got shot up before the game. I got shot up at halftime. Then I wouldn't practice for two or three days, and then I'd go through all the game planning and everything. Then I'd get shot up before the game and shot up at halftime so I could play. And you just get used to it. We had a line of. Athletes and the Steelers outside the doctor's hotel room, lined up to get shot up right before a game. It's crazy! It's like. And I remember this one guy, I won't. Yeah, I will. Dwight Mad Dog White. He was one of my favorite guys, a Texas guy. Played number 78, right defensive end. I'm in and I get shot up, and I'm like, oh! Finally, they finish and I'm sitting on the side of the bed, and I'm like, and Mad Dog is next. He's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Get out of the way, you big old sissy. Get out of here. Let a man show you how to take this shot. They were going to shoot his big toe up. They. They stuck a needle in that big toe, and that big sucker, he bitched up like you ain't never seen in your life. And I'm over there, boy, and I am laughing. Hey, Mad Dog! How's that shot go? Ah! Okay. So. So funny. So funny. I'll just. But I'll let you go on this. If you had to do it again, given all the fun, would you. Even with all this, you would do it again. It's what God called me to be. Exactly. That's my call-out. Thank you, pal. Thank you for all the entertainment on and off the field. Terry Bradshaw, everybody. All right. Yeah, anytime. All right. Let's see that, pal. Okay. Okay. Hi. All right. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and best-selling author whose forthcoming book is called The First Hundred Hours. Max Brooks, one of our favorites, is back here. And a new contestant. Great to have you here. She's the founder and publisher of The Bulwark and author of How to Eat an Elephant One Voter at a Time, Sarah Longwell. Sarah, great to see you. So, uh, I'm not going to talk a lot about Trump, but I read the pledge. I just. I didn't. finish really what he said. After that, he said. But you know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell. And I don't want that to happen to you. So he cares about us. You're a political elector. You both are. Is this trolling or is this, I mean, look. This is desperation. Well, yeah, but, I mean, I keep saying, does anybody want to win this fucking election? He said, pretend I'm on the ballot. Isn't this exactly what the Democrats want? Yes. For him. Yeah, no, this is, putting Donald Trump on the ballot right now when you're in the middle of an unpopular war, when gas prices is now, you get diesel up at six bucks, putting Trump on the ballot is every Democrat's dream. This is a time to really go on offense. I love that he was offering people $5,000 because it may shock you to know this, but he's lying. Those Doge checks haven't come in yet. And unless your name is Natalie Harp, you are not getting a check from Donald Trump. Right, but I've also heard this before. I remember I, myself, when the Haitian cats and they're eating the cats and the dogs, I remember it being, oh, that's it. Nobody, this is too crazy and no, and then he won. You know, so, I, I, it's dangerous to underestimate insanity. I don't know. What I thought was adorable was J.D. Vance thinking he's going to be president. Why? He could be. I mean, he could, depending if we do what we do best, which is screw everything. Screw everything up on our side, but the point of his appointment, the reason he's vice president is because he's a loser and that's what Trump does. That's what dictators do. All strong men, all CEOs, they always make sure they're indispensable, right? That they're crew proof. And the reason you do that is your second in command is nobody, anybody wants. That's why he had Pence. That's why we have J.D. Vance. He may still win, but I would be shocked if anybody a few years from now is waiting in the Wisconsin winter for four hours to see J.D. Vance speaking. I mean, let's say that about everybody. I mean, what, it's like, there's a generational talent in either party, like, you know, once every 25, 30 years. Clinton, Obama, Reagan. Other than that, it's always some guy who you hold your nose and go, well, he's less awful than the other guy. So I don't, I don't feel like J.D. Vance is any special category. Well, what, what scares me about, about that is if we are sacrificing, if we're charging towards a short-term win at the expense of long-term political suicide. Because right now the Democratic coalition is, well, at least we're not Trump. But what happens when Trump leaves and we've been bringing in some really toxic people with some really bad ideas. And let's say we go to the next election and our platform, there's no more Trump. And our platform is no cops, no borders, no jails, no private property. And cops. But communism, you know, he said, everyone was saying today, oh, he said communism a million times. I don't blame him. Yeah. I proved it here when I, just quoting them, just the quotes, no editorializing. It is communism. When you say we want to take over the means of production, they have quotes say, elect more communists. Communism this, communism that. Essential industries. This is not, there, yes, that's what I mean. Does anybody want to win this fucking election? No, I think the Democrats have this one in the bag. Because this one has to be, this one has to be about a referendum on him. We'll get mad at the Democrats later. This one is about you, Donald Trump. And this thing you mentioned about the Doge money that we're, that he. It's not coming. No, of course. It's not coming. And there was also, there's also a tariff. Yeah. A tariff dividend that was coming. And, you know, I think I have some standing with the conservatives. They always say to me when they come up to me, say, I know you're not on our team, but, you know, you respect us. You, you won't dismiss us like that. There's none of that. You can't come to thanksgiving. That bullshit. But I just got to say to you people, I know you don't like it when I call your names and, you know, you're not that bright. But when it comes to Trump, you're not that bright. You're just not that bright. It is a cult. And you've got to get a little smarter. I mean, how many times can the con man run the same con and you still applaud for it? I don't get it. Yeah. Let's just go back to this idea. First of all, I listen to voters all the time in focus groups. That's what the book's about. On the J.D. Vance question, the thing that, the thing that, the thing that's different about J.D. Vance is Republican voters in the focus group say things like, you know, I just don't like his face. Or I, I just, I don't, I think he seems weird. And that's very different from the parasocial relationship that Donald Trump has had for so long. And just the fact that that little. Nothing about him weird, huh? Trump-a-palooza. But, like, why was it in Dallas? He had to do that in Dallas because they are right now have a Senate race that Republicans might lose in Texas to a guy who once said that there were six genders. That is a crazy situation for Republicans to be in right now. Okay. Well, it's all kind of moot because we're all going to die. Now, I, I, I, I, I. Nothing, nothing, nothing more annoying than the guy, the I-told-you-so-the-world-is-ending. But I have been that guy. I've been saying this for quite a while. I, I, based on this, on what Bill Gates, Bill Gates, yeah, Bill Gates recently commented, but, but Elon Musk said in 2014, he said, this is the thing I'm most worried about. He was way ahead of this. What happened to you, Elon Musk, by the way? Your hair was on fire. I guess you put it out. Because this is what we found this week. A guy named Jacob Coxon worked for both OpenAI and Anthropic. I resigned from Anthropic today, he said. This was big news. Spent the last three years doing research. Neither company is acting responsibly. They do not understate the power of this technology. We'll soon be superhumans that can hack anything. And he said we may be gone in four years before the end of the. I literally saw this. Do you have this headline from the New York Post? Oh, AIWiz sees humans gone in a few years. This was on page five. Yeah. Not even the headline. And this is not new. This is something that we have known for some time that it could wipe us out because it has no soul because it's been programmed by people who have no soul. And how can you. I mean, my favorite thing about this story was that, you know, that person quit, came out, like it was a big bombshell, and instead of saying, oh, this is just some junior employee, don't, you know, ignore him, he came out and said, yeah, no, he's right, it's true, we might all die in fewer than. There's a 10% chance we might all die in the next couple of years. And this has been our problem since day one. We have failed to be tough on them and regulate them because they're not going to regulate their selves. You know, expecting the tech bros to suddenly care about humanity is like expecting my dog not to go for the mailman's balls. So. They asked Trump about this. He. What? About guardrails. He said, it's going to be fine. We'll always have something to stop us from doing. If we don't stop them, we'll have a little gear. Boom. We don't have a little gear. I don't know how close people follow this, but, like, what's going on now is that the robots, we call them the robots, it's not really the robots, it's stuff inside giant data centers, they are going rogue. They are doing things on their own. They're disobeying our orders. I wrote down, just so we don't get into the weeds, this is a show for the common man. Just some phrase, I picked out from headlines about this. It's broken out. Mounting assaults on other computers. Hacked into other computers. Took over. Bypassed. Ignored prompts. Colluding in secrets. No longer entirely in human control. Do you see a pattern? Are we getting the gist of this? It's on its own now. And I don't know if you can put the genie back in the bottle. There is no little gear you can push. The only way to do that is to put the genie back in the bottle. The only way to fix it is with more AI. That's the problem. It's too smart. You have to send in more AI to correct the AI that's fucking up. But they then wind up colluding with each other. Here's the thing that I was thinking about this day. A lot of us have always talked about, at least people with stage 4 TDS, we always talk about Trump being an existential threat. But it's not really that Trump's the existential threat. It's that there are existential threats out there. There is a war in Iran. There is this, there is this AI situation. And what you need then are serious leaders who can deal with serious issues. This is a new problem. But we have a feckless government that is not up to the task of even looking at this and trying to figure out what's going on. And I think that's the part that scares me, is there are no adults in the room now to navigate this. There is hope. Have you heard of the Frontier Act? No. Okay, so the Frontier Act is just being written and it's going to start to make its way through the Senate. And it is, the Federal AI Regulation Bill. And whether we know whether it has teeth or not will depend on how much the tech community fights it. It's like, you know, FDR used to say, judge someone by their enemies. And so if the tech community says, oh, no, I think it's really great. I think it's going to work out. Then we know that they've partially written the bill. If they fight it tooth and nail and they call it socialist, communist, communism, then we know this is actually something with teeth. We don't know which, in the bills that are about the stuff we know we don't know what's in the highway bill right who the fuck will know whether this is real or not we don't understand this they themselves don't understand it this is what this guy was saying we ourselves don't understand it's already passed there what who i'm mad at is regular people now regular people are sort of like rebelling a little bit but they're still loving their ai and and just by what's in your own phone forget all this highfalutin stuff we know it's a liar it definitely lies and then when you catch it oh sorry well i can i can get that from people i don't need that from a machine uh it gets stuff wrong it hallucinates it's a fucking ass kisser you know it tries to seduce you uh i i didn't want it in my phone so i got a whole separate phone to have it just that because i don't want it seeing my pictures my emails you know yeah that'd be tough maybe that worry what are you saying about yeah you to talk like a robot it hung up on me yeah i'm joking but i'm this is the way i think they should all have to talk like old robots and movies because then we'd be reminded they're robots i made a little piece to show you what they should sound like the plan was successful malfunction need input thank you ma'am good night ma'am i'll clean it up for you bully someone isn't gonna like that that's what your ai should sound all right so uh my uh uh fan duel is now available everywhere in the u.s so you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are including these places make this your most rewarding season ever with fan dual age and location restrictions apply product availability varies by market see fanduel.com for eligibility gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER My generation was in the news this week because boomers apparently are partying really hard. It's funny, you know, your father's generation raised my father's generation, the World War II generation. And what they said about my generation was that we were soft. That was the two things they used to always say. If they only saw what was coming. I mean, we're the fucking Navy SEALs compared to what came after us. They said we were soft and that we would never grow up. Well, they're so right about the second one. Because apparently the statistics, the boomer generation drinking more than previous generations at that age. Pot, never quit pot. I didn't, why would I? But they're also on screens, just like the kids. And they have more STDs than ever. Gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, way up. So I got a hold of Art Magazine. You know, that's the magazine they send you whether you want it or not when you retire. Oh yeah, there's a real one, Adam Sandler on the cover. It starts when you're 50, you know, and you can't stop it from coming. But I guess they've taken notice because they have some articles there. We'd like to see the new Art articles that are apparently based on disinformation. Four tips for vaping while on oxygen. Well, that's going to be great. Rolling on Molly, which wheelchair is right for you? It's about time, large print tattoos. Dear Barb, can I send dick pics by mail? Every night she fucks a stranger. What to do when your wife is a slut with dementia? Woo! It's not your imagination. Today's porn is hard to hear. Where to eat early at Burning Man. Quick impression, Amber Heard and seven other savers for when you crap the bed. And, uh. What now? Dolly Parton was my hall pass. All right. Um. All right, I want to talk about the military because you are a military expert and I want to get your feeling on both of you, of course, but you follow this very closely. Pete Hegseth over there at the Pentagon is really taking out a lot of military leaders. Not in Iran. Here. And I just. Don't get it. I mean, now, look, I'm not in the Pentagon. I don't know. What I read was that 10% have been fired. Now, maybe 10% is a reasonable number. There is bloat in the Pentagon. There certainly is in the budget. I don't know. But some of the people, when you read about these people that he's taking out, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, he's 38. This guy knocks dicks in the dirt for a living and has for 20 years. I mean, his pronouns are he-man. Yeah. These are not like. He's a Republican from North Carolina. These are not like the. Maybe it was too woke. Everything did get a little too woke under Biden. But, I mean, I just don't understand what's going on and maybe you can explain. No, I mean, I think we're in really, really dangerous waters because I think what most people don't understand is that there is no military on Earth that has worked harder to be apolitical than the U.S. military. Right. And that goes back to the days of George Washington. Where our founding fathers understood what brought down the Roman Republic were generals having their own private armies. Right. That's why the oath is to the Constitution, not the president. We put in safeguard after safeguard. That's why there has never been a mutiny aboard a United States naval warship. Never. That is on purpose. And if you start to degrade those, we are going to go back to the days of Vietnam. And I know a lot of retired generals who were young lieutenants in Vietnam and had to wear a gun on their hip in the barracks around the world. Right. Right. And they had to wear a gun on their own guys so they didn't get shot. Fragging. Fragging. Do we want that to come back? Do we want there to be a mutiny aboard a U.S. naval warship? Do we want just our talent to leave? You know, we forget the average general has more classroom time, not just battlefield, classroom time than the average brain surgeon. And they have worked so hard for so long to be apolitical. I've worked and lived around them for a long time. I don't know who they vote for ever. They've never talked politics. They've never voted for the U.S. military. military. the Ukraine war. And this is who Trump is getting rid of. The drone. This is the danger that happens in all autocracies, which is where we're sliding, is you choose loyalty over competence. And that's been the problem. That's why Putin couldn't win in Ukraine. That's why when the Chinese have war games, both sides win. It's because it's not about that. It's not about who's the best general. It's who's the best ass-kisser. It's why when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin thought, oh, shit, I have to go back in all the prisons and grab all the generals I didn't shoot because they're the only people who know how to fight a war. Yeah, and we don't know how to fight a war, apparently. All right. I've got one more issue to pretend that we're living in a normal country. There's a lady named Karen Parkinson. She's in Virginia, and she sent her kid out to take a walk for a half a mile along a pond because the kid likes to collect feathers from the goose, the geese, gooses, whatever it is. out there. And five minutes later, she was arrested. The three cop cars show up. And I just read this story. And it's not the first story. There was another lady, I think her name was Brittany Patterson, who sent her kid to the store. Compared to how I grew up, I mean, every day I was looking for goose feathers or something. I mean, I came home every day from school when, you know, everybody my age or even Gen X, I think, understands this. And mom didn't even want to know where you were. Where are you going? Fuck you, where am I going? I'm living my life. I'll do whatever you do between three and six. I'll be home for dinner. And what annoys me about this, and I think it's so wrong, is that you're not allowed to have this alternative way of parenting, which we used to call free-rage parenting. It is literally against the law. Now, you can make a case that I think it's more safe to lock my kid inside and sit him in front of a screen, because that's what's going to happen. I think that's the worst way to raise a kid. But I get it. But to make it illegal to raise your kid the way you want to, which is to let them, obviously, there are places we could go with it would be too far. But just to walk a half a mile by a pond, I think that's crazy. But I'd like you. It's also a gated, it was a gated community with security. The security guards are the one that sort of found the kids. So they clearly had moved there, because it was a nice, safe place where kids could walk around. It has gone too far. But it was the security guard that turned them in to the cops. Right. And can we talk about, can we work back from what is the actual threat when you look at things that could really go wrong? Was it a piranha pond? And by the way, you can have a happy medium between free-range and over-parenting. You have trackers now, right? I have one in my suitcase. You could put, you just put it in Spanky's overalls and say, okay, go to the pond. And if I suddenly see the tracker go into the blue, I'll know there's a problem. Right. That's true. This is the reason that kids are not prepared to live in the world as they grow up, right? I mean, this kind of, it's not even nanny statism. It's just this arrested development that comes from not being allowed. I was, I'm not, we're not the same age, but I, you know, I was born in 1980. All we did was run around the world. I was born in 1980. I was born in 1980. I was born in 1980. All we did was run around in the woods and nobody knew where we were. And now I think that both the anxiety of parents, I've got two boys, but the anxiety of parents is way up. And as a result, they hover over these kids and these kids never learn how to do anything on their own. And then they grow up, you know, and then they become Pete Hegseth and they can't fight a war. And let's be honest, their answer to that, and it's a hard one, is that they're not prepared to live in the world. And they're not prepared to live in the world. And they're not prepared to look someone in the face and refute is, yeah, but the worst could happen. And the kid could be abducted and killed. Yes, that was true when I was a kid, too, in greater, because what you're talking about, I didn't live in the surveillance age. No one knew where the fuck we were or what we were doing. There was no trackers. Now there is. You can do that. Right. And we live in a knee-jerk country. And that's my generation of parents, because apparently all of us were kidnapped and murdered. Right. And so we are so over-parenting when instead what we should be doing is calibrating and saying, like I said, what is the worst that could happen? Okay, it's collecting goose feathers by a pond. Okay, well, let's run the numbers. How many kids were killed by geese this year? Geese are mean. They're mean, but are they lethal? Yeah. No, it's not. They're worried about an evil clown who's out there who will abduct you. I mean, it is. Everything's possible. By the way, I would put the tracker right under the skin, not in the. Just dart them. What? No, you can do that now. But you said it. You said it's a gated community. It's not White Vanville, where they're just all strangers with candy waiting. No, I mean, when I was reading about the Lindsay Clancy case, I kept reading about parents so many who go on record. I mean, they make TikToks and saying they hate being a parent. And I'm like, you did this to yourself. I'm not surprised you hate being a parent, because you created this system where you could never be a parent. You could never be alone. My parents had time alone. Get the fuck out of here. And we did. You know, it wasn't a problem. You can never be alone. And everything is a negotiation with a child. Of course you're exhausted. You can't have that situation with a child. It'd be like having it in the military. Imagine if the military, you had to ask the soldiers, what do you think, guys? You want to go into battle? It's the same with kids. You can't ask them everything. Just do it. Get out of the car. Get in the car. We're leaving now. And I'm not a parent. No, you've got to let them live a little, because the A.I. is going to kill us soon. And so they've got to get out of here and do something. Exactly. All right. Thank you. Final time for New Rule. All right. New Rule. If you continue with a wedding despite water up to your waist from the flood that took out your church, it means two things. One, the bride. The bride is pregnant, so you better hurry. And two, if her water breaks, no one will know. New Rule. Enough time has passed since the Paris Hilton sex tape came out in 2004 that they have to explain why it opens with, in memory of 9-11, we will never forget. Great. Just the message I need when I'm trying to cum. Actually, the tape needs a second dedication. To married men everywhere who only get blown on their anniversary. New Rule. The influencer who died after his penis enlargement procedure in Thailand must take solace in the fact that he's more influential now than ever. Because there are thousands of young men who are going to get penis enlargement surgery. And because of you, now they're not going to. Well, at least not in Thailand. New Rule. Someone has to tell the men trying the new trend of pheromone maxing where you skip showers in the hope your natural scent will attract a female. Good news. This totally works. New Rule. Now that police have arrested this man for sharing illicit sexual images of children who went by the username Mr. Child Porn, have to tell us, what was the break in the case? Looking forward to when this case is on Law & Order shit for brains. And finally, New Rule. Since it's the 25th anniversary of 9-11, and since for 25 years we've been kept relatively safe from anything close to another 9-11, how about a hand for the Americans who made that happen? Because it didn't just happen. There was a war on terror, and we won. And yet, so much has changed since 9-11. For example, back then, we were against the terrorists. Really, no cap. Now, a lot of media outlets don't know what's going on. They don't even want you to say the T-word. On the 20th anniversary, four American journalism associations put out guidance that said that terrorism should only be used in quotes, because it's emotionally and politically loaded. Yeah, so is the World Cup, but we don't put soccer in quotes. Really? We can't anymore just say out loud who the bad guys were that morning? Those 19 hijackers, they shared something. Oh, let's call it a day. worldview and it wasn't astrology but somehow over time we've decided not to harp on that the whole business about who wanted us dead and why let's not put a name on it when it comes to terrorist attacks please there are very fine people on both sides canadian state tv told its reporters do not refer to the september 11th attacks as terrorist attacks no even though the very definition of terrorism is using violence against civilians to pursue ideological goals what should we call it then unruly passengers a wrong turn taken at the chrysler building why not just say the planes and the towers got into a fight i mean after all as the bbc advised its reporters using the term terrorist attacks as the definition of terrorism is using violence against civilians the word terrorist can be a quote barrier rather than an aid to understanding you know what's really a barrier to understanding lying back in 2001 after the attack i said this political correctness itself is something we can no longer afford feelings we're going to get hurt so that actual people won't well it didn't last i mean my show as for the idea of ditching political correctness and actually being honest that never even got off the ground after 9-11 there was a big debate was this a clash of civilizations it was and it still is not just a clash of civilizations it was and it still is not just a clash of civilizations not between muslims and christians no reasonable person was saying that but radical islamism versus western liberalism yes that's a real thing fighting people who hate freedom of religion and hate homosexuals and hate the idea of women as equal and free humans how did liberals wind up on their side and many did one in five young americans now has a positive view of osama bin laden he's like luigi mangioni in a turban you hear it in a lot of places now that the worst thing about 9-11 was innocent muslims came under suspicion yeah where that did happen it's wrong but the worst thing about 9-11 was 3 000 people got roasted at the office but the prevailing view of so many young people is that well come on we're the worst country ever so if someone attacks us that can't be all bad that certainly wasn't the attitude 25 years ago in fact i know a guy whose show got canceled just for saying the terrorists weren't cowards and that guy was right they weren't cowards but i'll tell you who is democratic party politicians and i'll tell you why because nowhere has this moral confusion become more obvious than in a place called gaza a little strip of land that was not part of the original israel but which they won in a war launched against them but then gave back gave back as a peace gesture did they tell you that part on tiktok kids and the people who run gaza hamas who you celebrate as a liberation movement but are really a terrorist mafia gang just like the one that terrorizes haiti only ever used it to stage attacks on israel i think macklemore spoke for all clueless celebrities when he said i know enough to know this is a genocide actually you don't know shit it's not it's not a genocide it's a counter-attack in a war a war that's been waged on israel since 1948 based on the ridiculous premise that jews don't belong in the one place on earth they are indigenous and indisputable their ancestral homeland hey geniuses they're the indians in this scenario ariana grande reposted that starving people to death is a red line well who would know better about starving but but make no mistake any famine that happened in gaza is because hamas stole the food just like the haitian gangs do israel ran 94 000 trucks carrying over 1.8 million tons of aid into gaza and enabled over 36 000 patients to leave gaza for treatment abroad which you tiktok historians might be interested to learn are not things countries usually do for their enemies during a war and certainly not what you would do if you were trying for a genocide gaza equals genocide is a lie an easily provable lie and the fact that so many prominent democrats go along with it is to me the party's worst moment since they undid reconstruction after the civil war democrats are policing their candidates really hard on this issue the genocide in gaza and i think your policy on the genocide in gaza you know with republicans there's something you have to say even though you know it's bullshit you have to say trump won in 2020 this is the democrats version of that but you but words do have actual meanings side side means to kill fratricide kill your brother homicide kill your fellow human suicide kill yourself genocide kill or try to kill an entire people you can't just change the definition of genocide to mean counter-attack in a war where people including civilians die that's every war there have been about 73 000 deaths in gaza about three percent of the population tragic not genocide not close there were three million jews in poland before world war two after 45 000 that's genocide if you're one of the many people these days asking this explosion of anti-semitism around the world that we see where is it coming from this this is where it's coming from because if you really think someone is committing genocide of course you have full permission to hate them and history shows for people don't need a lot of permission all right that's our show i want to thank my guest max brooks sarah longwell and terry bradshaw pub random drops every monday on youtube or listen wherever you get your podcast now go watch overtime on youtube thank you very much ladies and gentlemen catch all new episodes of real time with bill maher every friday night at 10 or watch him anytime on hbo on demand for more information log on to hbo.com fan duel is now available everywhere in the u.s so you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are including these places make this your most rewarding season ever with fan duel age and location restrictions apply product availability 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