Overtime – Episode #747: Ted Cruz, Kid Rock, Jim VandeHei

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series Real Time with Bill Maugh. All right, here we are on overtime at the founder and CEO of Axios and go author of "Simplified" Jim Banner High. He's a rock star, he's a new obnox called "Half Way to Jesus Good Rock." And he's the Republican senator from Texas and go author him going further. Senator Ted Cruz. First one is for you, Senator. Do you think Talleriko will win Texas? Simple question. God, I hope not. I don't know. Look, right now we are early vote Democrats are showing up more in early vote than Republicans. So if the election were over today, the answer would be yes. Now, from my perspective, the good news is there are a lot of Republicans still out there that can show up on election day, but it's going to come down to turnout. If those Republicans don't show up, not only could Talleriko win, you could see Democrats win every statewide race in Texas. But your guy in Texas running there, what do you think of him? He seems to be sort of a malfeasant fuck. Am I wrong? Look, I'm not going to convince you to love Ken Paxton, but you got to admit, Talleriko I think is a very weird dude. Why? Because he is like the ultimate woke social justice warrior. This is a guy who stands in front of a church. And Jesus has multiple genders. He says God is non-binary. He says there are six genders. He stands in front of a church and says he weeps for his whiteness and weeps for his masculinity. That's just weird. That is weird. I couldn't agree with you more. He means gay. What? Maybe he's just gay. That'd be easier to say, but instead he doesn't say that. But why are we inferring because he thinks Jesus is non-binary, which I don't think he means as. I know what that is. What do you think he meant? He's trying to go into this hole. What's a woman? No, I just think. Are we really talking about this 250 years later? No, I just think he. Look, I don't know that much about it, but I have heard those quotes. I think what he meant by the Jesus is non-binary thing is that, you know, there are a lot of people who believe in God. I mean, your whole album is about Jesus. In a more sort of like ethereal way, more spiritual way. Like it's not as. You know, he's not the man in the sky with the beard, you know, that kind of thing. So Bill, all of these, he's on video. He was asked, "Who do you really love?" And his answer is trans children. Well. I don't know anyone else who would answer that question that way. And it's. You know, he is. Is that the full answer? Yes, I promised you to pull up the video. He was asked, "Who do you really love?" And he pauses and thinks and says, "I really love trans children." This is a guy who is voted repeatedly. Like that's. And part of it is, he's of a younger generation where he came of age during COVID lockdowns, during all of this woke radical stuff. No, he didn't come of age during COVID lockdowns. He's 40. Politically. No, he's like 35. Politically, it was a mistake, legislating five years ago. Okay. Come of age means he was 14. Well, he still looks like he's 14. He also says on video that his objective is to quote "dismantle capitalism." Yeah, that's good. Look, I am not for any of that shit. I know. You're right. I just think your guy is even worse. All right. [ Cheers and applause ] Bob, what are your thoughts on Democrats saying they'll impeach Pete Hegseth? Oh, yeah. Akeem Jeffree says, "We're going to run him out of town." I know your friends -- For what? I know your friends with him if they protect the majority in Congress. For what? Well, I assume -- He must say this is what we're going to impeach him on, because he did this, this, and this. What? Well, he has fired people in the Pentagon. He got woke out of the military. Some of those people were the furthest thing from woke. We talked about it at the White House the other day. I remember. Yes, I forget the guy's name, Chris Donnie, maybe, maybe they're getting there. But this guy was exactly who you would want in the Pentagon. So I don't know what they got ready him for. And he was very high up. He was like head of the entire Middle East command or something. He's done a lot of that. He also seems to have used up all the missiles. You think they didn't tell us how many missiles. Maybe the Senator knows, but I don't even think he's going to tell us. I don't think -- I think we have enough missiles. I love -- I think the case against Hegsett, that is a fair one, and the Senator should weigh in, is -- There's a lot of really, really, really highly competent people who were serving in the military at the highest level, who he ran out of town. And at a moment where we're at war -- Right. And it's not like we have a surplus of super talented people ready to fill in that void. And I think the reason that a lot of Republican senators privately dislike the man profoundly. The Senator probably won't say it, but I can't think of a single Republican senator I talked to who does not profoundly dislike him. Oh, I like Hegsett. I'll say that definitely. And you think he's been an awesome defense secretary? Look, I -- I think he -- I'm serious. I'm not -- No, look -- I think one of the most important things he did was try to get the defense department back to a war-fighting culture. You look at the enlistment rates that are skyrocketing. Young men and women are eager to come serve this country again. And he's someone that was on the front lines fighting. And you look at as he goes out and works out with servicemen and women. I'll tell you, they love him and believe in him. And will the House impeach him? They probably will. But it has very little to do with him. And has everything to do with the Iran war. And if the Democrats take control, they'll want to do months of impeachment hearing to just attack the Trump administration all day long. Maybe the rank and file of him. I seem to remember him talking to a room full of generals. Do you remember that? Yeah. I remember the looks on their faces when he was going through his SNL impression of himself. And the looks on the faces of the general was, who the fuck is this guy? And why is he talking to us like this about beards and wait, and all this stuff? They were not happy. How many of those generals actually served? How many of those generals actually served like excesses? Probably almost all of them. No, not a lot of them, as you would think. They're really-- They're really the graduates of these big schools that sat in the other. Yes, a lot of them are. I've done a lot of these tours for-- Okay. A lot of these long wars. Afghanistan, Iraq. So, all over the world. He did a fly by over your house. He's right, the troops absolutely love him. He did not do a fly by over my house. What was that? To Apache helicopters. Did a fly by-- Okay. Right. Now. And it was fucking awesome. [ Laughter and applause ] Okay. All right. You know what I mean? You heard me the other night. I don't give a shit about any of this. The ballroom, the-- Yeah. With all the stuff that doesn't really matter. This doesn't really matter. But just tell me. Look at me in the eye and tell me. If Obama was president, and he did that over Jay-Z's house, you guys-- Jay-Z, you would say that was fucking awesome. Yeah. [ Laughter ] And your house's heads would explode. I don't know that I would particularly care where a couple of Apache helicopters flew. Really? Yeah, really. I can't remember. How much it means to these guys and girls to do this work to have something-- A little something like that. A little out of the norm. Something, you know, they didn't come back. I can show them. I can't. I have a little fun. There's too many big things to worry about. I would have no problem with that. Okay, all right. Invite me there for the next one. Go buy Jay-Z's house next time. Yeah. [ Laughter ] Ted, what's your reaction to Flavio? Bolsonera. Oh, fling to Miami. Oh, boy. This-- I find disturbing. I don't know that much about the Brazilian election. I know his father ran. Yeah. His father tried to do a Trump. And they put him in jail for it. And I remember doing a whole thing here. But I admire Brazil for doing the right thing there. But this is his son. He lost the election. He thought he was going to win. Yeah. And then the next day he's on a plane to Miami. I don't want to see what I'm saying is, I don't want to see this come here. I don't want to see a guy loses an election and he has to get out of the country because he's going to be arrested. Now, maybe this guy deserves to be arrested. But I don't know. This is dangerous stuff that I see possibly coming here. Yeah, look, Lula, who's the current president, is a communist who hates America. [ Laughter ] By the way, I'm not putting words in his mouth. That's what he says. He ran as a communist who hates America. Bolsonera, what did Lula do when he came in? He locked up his predecessor. You say, well, that's great because he did something wrong. I think he just threw his predecessor in jail because that's what Latin American dictators do. I understand why the son got out of town because with Lula coming back, I think he had every reason to think he'd come lock him in jail. And I will say one of the fascinating data points. Beginning of the Trump administration, they cut 83% of the funding to USAID. Do you know what happened after that? Seven consecutive elections in Latin America? Every one of them, the pro-America more conservative candidate won and the anti-America Marxist candidate lost, which raises a pretty strong inference that that money was funding the candidates who hate America. This was the one exception. This was the eighth election, and this one went the other way. But prior to that, it was, and by the way, among others, the New York Times has written about how this is unprecedented, this shift towards pro-America free market candidates. I want leaders of other countries to like America and not hate America. Yeah, I didn't know he was a communist. Mandami is a communist. Yes. I agree. I mean, I read the quotes on the air. You can't say things like we want to take over key industries. We want to take over the means of production. That's what communism is. I don't know about this lulu guy, you're sure about that? Yeah. He's quite open about it. OK. All right. Jim, a suspected Chinese spy reportedly got close to NVIDIA CEO, Jason Wang. How concerned should we be about China's efforts to infiltrate America's biggest technology companies? Super concerned. You go back to-- I do think artificial intelligence is going to be 100 times more powerful than anything we've had or had our hands on. The Chinese are in a fierce competition to beat us to it. We're happening to beat them right now. It's widely known that there's a ton of espionage going on, particularly in Silicon Valley, where they've planted folks from China into these companies to try to steal their secrets so they can get better equipment than we do. That's why I don't understand at different times where we start to play footsie with the Chinese and start to give in to them in areas where we have real dominance, like around chips. When you know that they want to eat our lunch militarily, diplomatically, financially, internationally, and that's-- they've written it down. They have a 2025 plan, a 2050 plan. Their whole game is to come after us. And the whole game is artificial intelligence. I don't need to keep harping back on it. But if you think about warfare, one of the things about-- I think it is right that we needed to return toughness to the military. The thing that we're missing is the future of war is not dudes on the ground. It's going to be really smart people figuring out how do you win war with satellites, with spaceships, with what's happening. It was cyber. That's where you look at the war in Iran. Look at what's happening. How do you create it? That's why-- Just now, he's putting all the bases off the grid electricity-wise. So if this happens to shut down power grids, all our military bases can still function. Every word Jim just said is exactly right. And it is, China is fighting a thousand-year war with us. They're fighting with technology. They are funding propaganda online. They're twisting our kids. They're pushing garbage at our kids. They're ripping apart our country. And China is funding, on university campuses, they were funding the anti-Semitic protests. Why? Not because they care about Israel or Jews. They care about ripping America apart. And you look at this country, they are pushing on our divides and trying to rip us apart. And you're right, AI, the growth of it is exponential. And if China wins the race for AI, America's screwed. They're working too hard. We can fuck ourselves that way. That's true. I don't think we need any help in fighting ourselves. But all right, one more. Bob, you've gotten to know Trump personally over the years. What's something about him that people would be surprised to learn? Oh, you want to tell the Macron story? What? The Macron, the golf cart story? Oh, yeah, that was funny. Yeah, we're all golfing. And I hate speaking out of school, but this is just a fun one. I mean, the guy's taking calls all day. He's working while you're golfing. The guy does not stop working. I think we can all agree on that. He works. He sleeps like me four or five hours a night, right? Doing so we're out there. MacRone calls. And he's like blah, blah, blah. He's talking. I'm kind of standing. We're on the golf cart, right? I'm standing next to his golf cart. And he's like, hey, I'm here with the great kid rock. Like, Macron knows what I am. [LAUGHTER] And he's like, he's like, Bob, say hello. So he gives me the phone. I'm like, hello, Mr. President. And I'm like, I'm from the parents of the Midwest. The twa. And Trump leaves, gets in the golf cart. He leaves. I'm like, I love that. He leaves MacRone on the phone with kid rock. What else you've been up to? [LAUGHTER] All right. Thank you very much, you guys. I appreciate it. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher, every Friday night at 10. Or watch a mini-time on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.