Ana Kasparian on Club Random w/ Bill Maher (Transcript)

One relationship is that’s in the balance. I mean, you know, it was…

ANA KASPARIAN: And that’s not a real friend.

BILL MAHER: Well, I mean, we weren’t close. I mean, I’m talking like it’s, it was Jimmy Kimmel. I mean, I said it publicly and I like Jimmy a lot. And his wife wrote a thing that said, you know, she did lose family members. She wrote them before the election and said, “Here’s 10 reasons why you just can’t vote for Trump.” And then some of them, you know, just didn’t follow that.

And I was as kid gloves as I could, and I see they’re mad at me, and I’m sorry. I mean, I was being, again, as respectful as I could, but I don’t agree with that point of view. And since she went public with it, it wasn’t out of school for me to go public with it. I love Jimmy. I always have. I don’t know him that well, but he’s a great guy and we have a connection. We were both fired by ABC. And he took my, I had that time slot. So it’s so interesting. The same ABC, I mean, Disney executive. Both interesting, the connections. And so I hope we’re friends forever. But I don’t know, you know.

The liberals and the woke. That’s a schism. It just is.

The Most Miserable Years

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. I mean, I would say that the time of my life where I was the most miserable was probably 2015 through 2019.

BILL MAHER: Before the pandemic.

ANA KASPARIAN: It was before the pandemic. I mean, wow. The pandemic was better for you?

BILL MAHER: Things were better.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, look, actually, I hate to admit it, but things did get better for me during the pandemic. I was like, oh, I get to work from home. I’m exhausted. I’m burnt out.

BILL MAHER: And it didn’t put pressure on the marriage because lots of people…

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no.

BILL MAHER: Lots of people said that people broke up because it’s like, oh, I got to look at your a all day. That I didn’t bargain for that.

ANA KASPARIAN: That wasn’t at all an issue with us. It did kind of start to be so. My husband was a bartender when the pandemic hit, and so he obviously got laid off right away, which I was, you know, understanding about. I think what started to kind of get in between us, although not to the point where it became a problem, was where I felt like I was working all the time, even though I was working from home and…

He was a bartender. So he doesn’t really have any other options other than making a career change, of course. So finally got to a point where I was like, you need to make a career change. And I’m glad I did that, even though it was difficult for me to do because being the nagging wife is not my thing. But he was understanding about it.

And he then pursued what I think he was always meant to do, which is he’s the head baseball coach at a school, and he was a professional baseball player prior to that. When his baseball career ended, that was when he came out to LA and started working at restaurants and stuff to figure out what do I want to do next? And then he got comfortable. You know, I think that happens to a lot of people. So Covid was a bit of a crisis that we took as an opportunity to move forward in life in certain ways, if that makes any sense.

Marriage and Partnership

BILL MAHER: This sounds like the kind of thing. I never got married, but I’ve never been a person. I think people have this misconception that I’m anti-marriage. I’m only anti-marriage for me. I get it because I see so many of my friends who are married and of course most marriages do fall apart in some way. But I also know plenty of people who’ve had great ones and would be really lost without their spouse. And some people, they’re just, their nature is to have to be in a partnership.

ANA KASPARIAN: True.

BILL MAHER: You know, it’s a two-man seesaw thing. That’s not me. Yeah, I’m a lone wolf, always have been.

ANA KASPARIAN: If you know yourself and that’s what you like, then go for it. I mean, life is short.

BILL MAHER: I’m very social, but ultimately I’m a lone wolf. And that, but this sounds to me like what a marriage should be like. Not nagging. But when you need that person to, you know, you’re on this teeter-totter together to get things even and balanced, they’re there to do that totally. And that’s great. I mean, if you’re of that personality. I think most people are, most people are always looking for, you know, “complete me.” And some of that is cliche, but some of it is kind of true. I’ve seen people who were incomplete.

ANA KASPARIAN: I definitely, I didn’t realize I was incomplete until I met him. And there are qualities of his that I think I’ve adapted for the better. So for instance…

He’s just such a kind-hearted person who sees the good in everyone. And so when I talk about the period of my life when I was the most miserable, I wasn’t able to see the good in everyone. Right. And so I was very much in the mindset of who you vote for demonstrates what your values are. And if I have determined that the person you voted for is a bad actor or immoral, that means you’re bad and you’re immoral. And it is a terrible place to be where you think half the country is awful.

Understanding the Other Side

BILL MAHER: That is exactly what my theme was Friday. And you know, so I was disappointed that, you know, I said about the thing again, trying to be respectful. She had said, “I sent my relatives a letter with 10 reasons you should not vote for Trump.” And I first of all said 10. I could think of 100.

But to me, a better exercise. And as someone who votes Democratic, a better exercise would be write a letter to yourself, 10 reasons why you might imagine those 77 million Americans could not vote. But I want to get back to this husband thing just for a second because I’m so, no, I’m very interested in this. It’s just endlessly fascinating to me, how different people do it, you know, and how they make…

ANA KASPARIAN: We do it real well, I’ll tell you that.

BILL MAHER: Well, please. This is a family. Oh, no, it’s not. It’s Club Random. What the f* am I talking about? I’m drinking and taking drugs and swearing. It’s not a kid show at all. And kids, by the way, it would not be the worst message. Kids, if you’re going to do it well, do it well. Do it well. Remember the song, “Give it your All. Doing it, doing it, doing it well.” You do remember it.

ANA KASPARIAN: Of course I do.

BILL MAHER: That is the single best sex song ever.

ANA KASPARIAN: It is pretty sexy.

BILL MAHER: Hello, Cole.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes, it’s actually, man, they don’t make music like that anymore.

BILL MAHER: They don’t make that one anymore. They certainly don’t.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yep.

Marriage, Success, and Finding Your Best Friend

BILL MAHER: And it always, like, it was so sexy. And then when he got to the part when he says, “I was raised out in Queens, she was from Brooklyn” or was made the other way, I was like, yep. What does that. It’s so sexy. And then we have to talk about what borough we’re from. It just always cracked me up.

ANA KASPARIAN: I know, but it’s like the amazing record. Yeah. The woman who’s, like, singing in a sultry way and moaning at the same time. So sexy.

BILL MAHER: Oh, and the lyrics, I mean, they’re dirty. Without being like, he’s got some that are like, trust me. Would not win the now man of the Year honor.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, definitely not. Definitely not.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, but this one doesn’t tip over into that.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: But see, your dynamic sounds to me like Lifeguard.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, tell me more. What do you mean?

BILL MAHER: Lifeguard, the movie?

ANA KASPARIAN: I didn’t see that.

BILL MAHER: Of course you didn’t. It was from 1976 and I saw it when I was 20. Why? You would have seen it. There’s no reason. But there’s a movie and I did like it when I was 20. Sam Elliott. Do you know who that is? The actor?

ANA KASPARIAN: No.

BILL MAHER: No. Sam Elliott.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m not great with movies and pop culture, which is hilarious because I started my career as an entertainment.

BILL MAHER: Sam Elliott. You would recognize him. He’s now on Landman. He plays Billy Bob Thornton’s dad. He looks like he’s a million years old, but in 1976, he was young and hot and he played Lifeguard. And the lifeguard was this guy. He’s a lifeguard. But now he’s 33 and he goes to his 15 year high school reunion and he meets up with Ann Archer, Scientologist. We’ll leave that out of it. Hottie of her day and, you know, kind of reconnects, but she doesn’t want him to be a lifeguard, which is kind of like bartender, you know? But he’s good at it, and he saved lives.

ANA KASPARIAN: He was good at bar. He made a mean martini. I will say that sometimes you do.

BILL MAHER: Kind of save lives. I mean, you do talk to people. And I mean, it’s totally. It’s a great job. But she wants him to, like, grow up because, you know, 30 if we’re going to be together, so he’s got to decide, well, the chick wants me to be a Porsche dealer, put on a tie, and, like, be with the man. But I like being out in the sun and just. And so all I could say is, he went back to the lifeguarding thing. But you could be the Porsche dealer, and that’s fine, too.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. I mean, look, for me, like, what I get out of my marriage is it’s emotional. Right. It’s more than just, oh, what does he do for a living? And you got to get along with the person. You have to look forward to seeing them at the end of the day. Right. And he’s my best. At the end of the day, he’s my best friend, you know?

And when I’m at my lowest, he’s the only person that can kind of like, lift me back up, you know? He just gets me. And more importantly, I need a guy who is not, I don’t know, sensitive to the idea that his wife is successful in her career.

BILL MAHER: Right.

ANA KASPARIAN: Like, there are.

BILL MAHER: And you’re very successful now.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m. I’m okay. I’m doing well.

BILL MAHER: Oh, you’re doing very well.

ANA KASPARIAN: Thank you. Thank you.

BILL MAHER: You’re at Club Random.

ANA KASPARIAN: That’s true.

BILL MAHER: No, you’re Everybod. Everybody wants you as a. You know, you’re a podcast star.

ANA KASPARIAN: Thank you.

The Future of Television and Content Creation

BILL MAHER: That’s a good thing to be in this day and age. I mean, I’m in podcasting, but also, obviously, television. And is there even going to be television in three years?

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I mean, not in the way that we traditionally think of it. Right. And I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a. Right.

BILL MAHER: Well, I mean, I don’t buy this house. I mean, I don’t know if it’s a good thing.

ANA KASPARIAN: You made a smart move. I mean, I think you saw the writing on the wall, and it’s better to have, you know, look, I’m.

BILL MAHER: I’m. We’re both what they call content.

ANA KASPARIAN: Mm.

BILL MAHER: Let Them. Let the other people figure out where the content goes is not my job.

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay?

BILL MAHER: The content, I mean, where it goes, I’m the content. They’ll. The other people will figure it out. There’ll be a market for the content that I know. So you can put it on streaming, you can put it in your pants, you could put it in the theater, you could. Whatever you’re going to do, you could do into their brain. I could just tell you what I’m thinking. I don’t know what the f* it is going to be, but I don’t think I can do exactly what we do.

AI and the Coming Job Apocalypse

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t either. I mean, I am worried about AI when it comes to large swaths of the American population because their jobs will be replaced with AI.

BILL MAHER: It seems like we’re sailing toward this iceberg totally. And everyone is sort of pretending that’s not what’s going to happen. Even though there are people in the industry itself who are saying, no, this is, this is, you know, it can do 30 to 40% of the coding jobs right now.

ANA KASPARIAN: So like, I mean, already so many coders are losing their jobs in Silicon Valley, which is like the most ironic thing in the world.

BILL MAHER: So ironic.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. Like, the first to go are the workers who helped kind of foster this.

BILL MAHER: New technology and also the kind of pretenders of the left who are like, care about the people, the marginalized people, as we should. But then it was like, but, you know, that’s. I can say that because, like, my jobs are safe, you know, it’s not going to come from my job. I’m like, I went to college. Okay. I have a degree. And you know, I mean.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yep, yep, yep. That’s such a great point.

BILL MAHER: Oh, shit. It’s my job.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right, right. I mean, that’s known as the professional managerial class. Right? Correct. Yeah, yes. And so they have, you know, thought that they’ve been safe, but meanwhile, in the background you have new technology being developed that’s going to make their positions totally antiquated, irrelevant, unnecessary. Which, you know, middle management, I don’t know. My heart doesn’t necessarily break for them, but my heart does break for the country. Right. Overall, because I think.

BILL MAHER: Right.

ANA KASPARIAN: If we don’t find solutions to this.

BILL MAHER: Middle management is not.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. I don’t think people are shedding tears for middle management. No offense to the middle manager.

BILL MAHER: No, that term does not pull on the hard.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right, exactly.

BILL MAHER: Ukrainian orphan or, you know.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right, right.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, you’re right.

ANA KASPARIAN: Or you know, truck driver. Like, I worry about the drivers. Like they’re going to be out of a job soon. So what’s the plan? And that’s the thing that worries me because I look at the political landscape and I think you and I. The one area where I think we have a lot of agreement is where we are willing to be critical of the Democratic Party. I’m obviously also critical of the Republican Party. Neither party seems competent for the moment that we’re in.

BILL MAHER: No.

ANA KASPARIAN: And that’s terrifying.

BILL MAHER: I agree.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, it’s absolutely terrifying.

Political Incompetence and the 18-Inning Game

BILL MAHER: Right. It’s. It reminds me of the. I’m sure you watch the World Series every inning.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, definitely.

BILL MAHER: But there was one 18 inning game which is very long.

ANA KASPARIAN: That was the Dodgers and.

BILL MAHER: Yes, the Dodgers and the Blue Jays.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: And that’s twice as long. It’s nine extra innings, a whole nother game. And it’s like nobody scored in those extra innings. It was like, wow, this is there for the taking, for one of you teams to win this game, which was. Tipped the series to you, and nobody could do it. And I was like, that is exactly what the Republicans and the Democrats. I mean, the Republicans, when they came into office, they so had the wind at their back. All they had to do was not get drunk with power.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And f* it up. And of course, that’s exactly. And I don’t think his instincts about fixing this and this and this and this are wrong always. There is lots of shit that needs fixing, and some he’s fixed great in my view. Like, did better in the Middle east than anybody had done. Got NATO to pay for shit. Colleges out of control. Yes. But of course, almost everything the way he does it is just a disaster.

ANA KASPARIAN: I agree with you on NATO. Yeah. Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And it’s unnecessary, Doge. You know, it’s like just unnecessarily assholeish to a problem that if you had just, you know, handled it in a just a more humane, human, farsighted way, you’d have the people behind you. And now he’s starting to lose them. Oh, because of the economy.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: And they. Even with immigration, even though they agreed with him, they don’t like the.

Immigration: Finding a Better Solution

ANA KASPARIAN: They don’t like watching day laborers at Home Depot parking lots get snatched up by masked men. Right. Like, they don’t like seeing, you know, parents get snatched up by ICE agents as they’re dropping their kids off to school. Like, I just. Look, I think Biden really did mess up when it comes to immigration 100%. So I actually really sympathize with people who were furious over what happened with immigration under the Biden administration at the same time, I don’t think most Americans who are. Who think of themselves as hardliners on immigration realize just how integrated undocumented immigrants are in our society. Right.

And I’m talking about people who have been here for literally decades who do pay taxes, but don’t get the benefits that come along with the, you know, various public programs that they’re funding through their taxes. And there needs to be a better solution than swinging from one extreme to another on this topic.

And the thing that I am the most furious about, honestly, is Congress. Congress is the most useless branch of our government at the moment. I’m not saying it’s unnecessary. I think it’s an important part of our government. But over the last few decades, we both know Congress has ceded much of their power to the executive branch as it pertains to foreign policy. Big mistake.

BILL MAHER: That’s been going on for 70 years.

ANA KASPARIAN: Absolutely.

BILL MAHER: Congress is supposed to be the most important branch of. I mean, that’s what the Constitution says.

ANA KASPARIAN: They’re the ones who are supposed to write the bill, pass the bill.

BILL MAHER: Power of the purse, power of declaring war. The President is supposed to just the guy who is supposed to carry it out.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: Executes it. He’s the top executive, but he’s like, you know, you hire a CEO to run your company, but he’s not the dude. He’s carrying out what the guy who owns Starbucks is his vision.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: Okay. That is, as you say, completely lost. And the only. I mean, I did a piece a few weeks ago about the Supreme Court being the last line of defense here. We’re going to see what they’re going to say about tariffs. Like, whatever you think about tariffs, they.

ANA KASPARIAN: Have to strike it down.

BILL MAHER: I mean, it’s a con. It’s a congressional thing.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: And so, like, these kind of basic things. If. And I’m not completely pessimistic about how the court is going to rule. The Supreme Court does have the ability to.

ANA KASPARIAN: They’ve ruled against.

BILL MAHER: Surprise you.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

California’s Political Dysfunction

BILL MAHER: And sometimes they take a hip pill and get it right. Not always. And they have certainly gotten a lot more conservative over the years. But I’m not going to do it like the first time. Like, when it happens, maybe I’ll get upset if it’s the thing that is worth getting upset about and talking about and critiquing, and I never pull a punch on that. But, you know, I don’t give a s* about the ballroom.

ANA KASPARIAN: Me neither.

BILL MAHER: And if you do, it’s just an indication that Trump is much too part of your personality. It doesn’t matter. First of all, it doesn’t cost you anything.

ANA KASPARIAN: That’s the number one thing. That’s the most important thing.

BILL MAHER: Even if it did, it’s a round. It’s like two seconds of the interest we pay every day.

ANA KASPARIAN: But can we talk about the feminine qualities of our president for a minute? Okay.

BILL MAHER: Everything is so gay. I mean, the—no offense, courtrooms, and gold, gold everything.

ANA KASPARIAN: And the millwork on the walls and everything. He’s so proud of it.

BILL MAHER: It’s a very butch administration and Hegseth with the, you know, we want no gays. We just want, well shaved, strapping young men in perfect shape. I mean, the whole thing is—

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s amazing. It really is.

BILL MAHER: It’s very gay.

The Double Whammy of Incompetent Leadership

ANA KASPARIAN: But, you know, so you have this going on on the federal level, which is bad enough, but as you and I both know as Californians, we get a double whammy of experiencing the incompetence of leadership in our state. And so, I feel like I find myself in this really interesting position of experiencing what corrupt Democratic leadership looks like and how disastrous it is.

And then on a federal level, I’m not, you know, loving a lot of what’s been happening recently with the Trump administration.

BILL MAHER: No.

ANA KASPARIAN: And I just—I understand Americans who have just completely written off politics. They don’t vote, they don’t engage. I think that’s a mistake, but I understand where that’s coming from.

BILL MAHER: I feel the same.

ANA KASPARIAN: I just don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it’s fixable.

BILL MAHER: It’s not as long as there’s smartphones. Because that just is making us ever stupider. And I mean, people don’t know anything anyway, so, I mean, they’ve completely lost the thread with education. But can I tell you, talking about California.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yep.

BILL MAHER: I mean, you’re from here, right?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes, born and raised.

The Fire Story

BILL MAHER: Okay, so here’s a fire story. In January when the fire hit, Matt Gaetz was a scheduled guest. I think it was January 7th, and he drove through the fire to get here to keep the booking. I mean, I’ve had people cancel bookings for nothing. And then we chatted here right up until the evacuation order came.

ANA KASPARIAN: No way. Good for him. That’s actually really impressive. No, but seriously.

BILL MAHER: Well, my catchline is always, everybody’s a monster till you talk to them.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And then there are certain things you’re obviously going to still disagree about. You know, I mean, Lara Trump was here, like last show we did. And, you know, as all these shows with the Republicans, I mean, they take their beating like a man. They never ever get upset when you—we go back and I mean, there must have been six to eight things, major things that, you know, I just pushed back on, you know, and two minutes later we’re laughing.

And there’s a way to do it where you just cannot expect—you just can’t have that attitude of, you must come around to my way of thinking or you’re dead to me. Unfriend you, cut you off, no Thanksgiving for you. It just doesn’t work. Even if it was the right thing to do, which it is not right, because you are not God and you don’t know what the answer is.

And again, imagine ten reasons why they think differently. People are different. They grow up in different parts of the country. They have a different thing that was put in their head as a child. Different personalities. A lot of politics is your personality. People are sometimes just born square. You’re a square. What party are you going to be? You’re going to be in the square party, you know?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And it’s just to hate them for that is just—it’s cuckoo.

The Value of Political Debate

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I hate—I don’t—there’s very few people that I hate. I think I can maybe name one. But for me, it’s about a person’s actions and whether or not they are wittingly hurting others and totally okay with that. You know what I’m saying?

BILL MAHER: That’s a good standard.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. And I love political debate. I really do. And I forget oftentimes when I’m engaged in a passionate, you know, political debate that not everyone thinks the way I do because I’m able to get as fiery as we need to as we’re, you know, arguing. But once the debate’s over, it’s over. Right. We just had a policy debate.

Just because we have different points of view doesn’t mean that I’m going to write you off and I’m done with you. I’ve had fiery debates on the show I host and executive produce, The Young Turks, you know, with the CEO of the company and founder Cenk Uygur. We don’t agree on everything, but we have this ability to sometimes get into shouting matches. And then once we’re done with the shouting match, we’re done. It’s past us.

BILL MAHER: And that’s good practice for marriage, actually.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, it is. It is, totally. Because at the end of the day, you’re talking to a human being. You’re fighting and arguing with a human being. And to distill them as one political viewpoint and nothing more, I think is unfair to them. And people change, by the way. I’ve changed.

BILL MAHER: Right, right.

ANA KASPARIAN: And going through that evolution has made me far more empathetic to people overall.

BILL MAHER: Change is good.

ANA KASPARIAN: Change is excellent, you know? Yeah.

BILL MAHER: I mean, there’s nothing stupider in politics than people who say, “Well, he’s changed his position.” Yeah, he was eighteen. You know, he got new information, came along. Flip flop, flip, flip flop, you know. Totally. If it’s generated by logic, flip flop is good. It means you grew, you learned something new.

ANA KASPARIAN: Totally.

BILL MAHER: You went with the facts. You weren’t stuck in, “No, I believed it when I was twelve and I believe it now. Girls have cooties.” That’s my position.

Criminal Justice Reform Gone Wrong

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s ridiculous. I mean, also, it’s okay to change your mind if the policies you want have been implemented and it turns out the policies suck and you don’t like them. Right. I mean, it’s okay to admit, “Oh, this didn’t work out, let’s recalibrate.” And that was my big issue with Democrats and California in particular, where it’s like, oh, we have done some of these criminal justice reforms and they’ve been kind of disastrous.

BILL MAHER: So much. I mean, if I just—I could list just the things that the left has done that they think are helping that are counter to their own goals. They’re literally—your head is up your a, you know. Defunding the police, which, you know, didn’t help African Americans, who usually want more police, not corrupt police.

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s even worse than that.

BILL MAHER: But they want more police. It’s so racist. They think they’re being anti-racist. And actually it’s being very racist to assume that black people—it’s saying, “Well, aren’t they the criminals? We can’t have a lot of cops around them.” No, they’re not.

ANA KASPARIAN: So a really good friend of mine who does consulting for media would send me polls. And the polls were about, you know, black Americans and how they feel about policing and what they want. Do they want to defund policing? Do they want to keep the funding levels the same? Do they want to increase policing?

And I was shocked. Poll after poll indicated no, they don’t want to cut funding for policing. In fact, the problem they have with policing is that they don’t feel that the police force in their community is doing enough to keep themselves safe in their communities, which is very similar to what was happening in the 1990s.

If you go back and watch local news reports out of L.A., for instance, in the 1990s, one of the biggest complaints from, you know, people living in—at the time it was South Central. Now it’s considered South L.A. One of the biggest complaints was we don’t see enough police keeping our communities safe.

And so the data is the data. You can’t manipulate hard facts. And for me, when I signed on to criminal justice reform, what I thought I was signing onto was, we’re going to reform our prisons. Our prisons shouldn’t be torturing people. Prison rape shouldn’t just be accepted. Right. I want this to be more than just punitive. I want to rehabilitate people. I want to have a situation in which they pay the price for their crime, but they’re also being rehabilitated so that when they get out, they’re able to be productive members of society.

We didn’t actually do much of that in California. There’s one prison that’s been reformed, and it’s actually showing really great results, and I hope that that spreads. But the idea of, “Oh, we’re just not going to punish anyone for pretty much anything” is not what I thought I was signing up for, but that’s pretty much what we’ve gotten.

And preemptively shutting down, you know, four to five state prisons without really having a plan in place for what happens to oftentimes violent inmates was a disastrous idea by Gavin Newsom, to be honest.

The Trans Issue in Women’s Spaces

BILL MAHER: I mean, the bizarre—just this bizarre obsession with putting women—putting rather men, or at least people with penises—

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, you can get me in trouble. Get me in trouble, Bill. Can’t get me in trouble.

BILL MAHER: Why? There’s no trouble for you. Your life is trouble.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m supposed to be totally okay.

BILL MAHER: There’s no “supposed to be.” First of all, is it bad that—

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t want to see a d* in the women’s locker room? Is that bad?

BILL MAHER: No, it is.

ANA KASPARIAN: I just don’t. I don’t want to see a c* in the women’s locker room.

The Transgender Rights Debate

BILL MAHER: And you shouldn’t. And no woman should. I mean, this is basic 101. And this is, again, to my point about if I just list it, and I could do it for a long time. The things that they do because they’re so tripped up by their own ultra ideology that they think that makes them a better person.

To be so counterintuitive about all these issues like this, that this makes them the good people, that they’re way out ahead on this issue and you’re not. And it’s not what people want, and it goes against human nature, and it’s not helping. You didn’t. Yeah. You want to champion women, and you didn’t. You did the opposite.

ANA KASPARIAN: I know. Because there’s the hierarchy.

BILL MAHER: You made them uncomfortable.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, 100%. In many ways, when you see everything as a hierarchy, literally everything’s a hierarchy. Well, then inevitably, you’re going to find yourself in a situation where the rights of one group kind of falls by the wayside.

BILL MAHER: Right. It’s a zero sum game.

ANA KASPARIAN: And I don’t see it that way. I actually, I respect transgender people. I do not want to treat them like the others. I want them to have rights. I want them to be treated with dignity. Respect.

BILL MAHER: Exactly.

ANA KASPARIAN: At the same time, I also know what it’s like to be a woman living in a state where we’ve decided self ID makes the most sense. Okay, well, self ID doesn’t make the most sense.

BILL MAHER: No.

ANA KASPARIAN: Because obviously, as you and I both know, there are all sorts of predators out there who are going to take advantage of that situation. And that’s already happened. Right. So there was that big Wi Spa story, and it turned out that the so-called transgender woman who was allowed into the women’s locker room at a Korean spa in downtown L.A. was not actually a transgender person, was a person who had a long record of sexual exploitation and assault or whatever, pretended to be transgender, gets into the women’s locker room.

And I felt so bad because I bought the COVID story when it was first reported, but I was wrong to buy it. I should have asked more questions. And that poor woman, she happened to be a black woman who’s complaining at the front desk of Wi Spa. She was dragged through the mud, when in reality, she witnessed this person fondling themselves in the women’s locker room.

Now, this person is not transgender. This is not an indictment of transgender people. It’s an indictment of a policy that was not thought through. And as a result, there are women who are going to suffer. And as a result, there are transgender people who are going to suffer because people are going to make the mistake of thinking, “Oh, well, that guy was transgender, and this is how they behave.” No, this is not how they behave. We need to be smarter about these policies. It’s that simple.

BILL MAHER: So good to hear you say that. Yeah, really good. I did not expect that.

ANA KASPARIAN: Really?

BILL MAHER: Well, in general, you’re a lot more reasonable than I thought you would. The fire breathers, you know, are always trying to…

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, if we start talking about Gaza, I think you’re going to disagree with me. Probably. That’s probably where we have the most disagreement. But in terms of the transgender issue…

BILL MAHER: Well, wait a minute. Maybe later. Maybe later.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean…

BILL MAHER: Yeah, because I will definitely carve you into little pieces on that one.

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t know about that, Bill.

BILL MAHER: Okay.

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t know about that.

Media Bubbles and the Truth

BILL MAHER: But on this one, first of all, good for you for saying that. I say it all the time. It’s no shame to say, “Oh, I believe the COVID story.”

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, I do.

BILL MAHER: Because the COVID story just means that everybody has their own narrative. Nobody pursues the truth on either side. You have to work really hard. But since it’s my job, I do. To get the full story, nobody ever prints the… If you read the New York Times and the New York Post, it’s like these two, which is, it’s just funny to do it because it’s like, “Oh, I see what you left out. Oh, I see what you totally…”

ANA KASPARIAN: I see what you…

BILL MAHER: I see what you left out. It’s not that either one of you, of course, they both lie to a degree. And the New York Post is just sometimes just flat out funny in how they do it, but they just omit.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: And, you know, but you sound like, and I say this as a compliment, J.K. Rowling, because this is her thing. And I don’t know if you saw her take apart Emma Watson.

ANA KASPARIAN: No.

BILL MAHER: Okay. See, there’s something that was not reported in the New York Times that I saw. We don’t see that. We don’t notice this. This is not worthy of comment. And it so f*ing was. And of course, in the New York Post, they loved it because J.K. Rowling. Brilliant. J.K. Rowling. I mean, not that I’ve ever read Harry Potter. To me, it’s a children’s book, but maybe someday.

ANA KASPARIAN: Same. Yeah.

BILL MAHER: You know, but a great one, I’m sure. Got kids reading. But I just love her because, you know, she just says it. And she finally had enough of Emma Watson, who was, you know, super woke and, you know, one of the useful idiots also on things like Gaza. And so, you know, which tells you something, that her views on Gaza were just as crazy, I think, as her views on, you know, the women thing.

And, you know, J.K. Rowling was just unmerciful. She was like, “Well, you know, this is not an issue for you because when you go into a public bathroom, you have a bodyguard who stands outside the door.” You know, and she talked about how, you know, “When I was your age, I didn’t have all this privilege that you were always so hateful. I was home working on the book that made you a star.” You know, it was, she just wasn’t having it anymore.

ANA KASPARIAN: Because you do get to a point where, and I think on a lot of issues, I’m at, I’m at that point where you’re just sick of the BS on both sides. Right. And you want to cut through all of it. And look, honestly, you’re never going to get to the truth if you’re only relying on partisan media. And that’s what I was doing. I was very much in a bubble. I didn’t realize I was in a bubble.

So now it’s like I have to, do I have to eat my vegetables? To me, eating vegetables, as someone who works in media is reading and consuming content that you know is going to make you uncomfortable because it’s going to challenge what your preconceived notions are. If you’re listening to a podcast…

BILL MAHER: The truth never makes me uncomfortable. It only exhilarates me. I mean, I’m not aware it’s, you know, on whatever side it is.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And when I… You want to talk about a little bit of that.

ANA KASPARIAN: You want to get exhilarated, right? Now I can exhilarate.

The Gaza Debate

BILL MAHER: And now you’re going to say genocide. And I’m going to say, “Well, you don’t know what the word means.” And it’s like you don’t even know what the words mean.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m Armenian. I know what the word means.

BILL MAHER: Right?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Okay. It’s when you try to wipe out an entire population of people, which they didn’t come close to doing. I mean, they prosecuted a war in which they were attacked, which everybody gets to do.

ANA KASPARIAN: Which, by the way, let me just say, if they were doing, if they were literally going after Hamas, which they, legitimate. That’s totally legitimate. But that’s not what’s happening.

BILL MAHER: Hamas hides in tunnels underneath hospitals. You can’t go…

ANA KASPARIAN: Hold on, hold on, hold on.

BILL MAHER: Hamas is the bad guy. If you don’t get that, you don’t get much.

ANA KASPARIAN: What Hamas did on October 7th was disgusting killing. I mean, I don’t think, I don’t, I don’t at all hold back on that. In fact…

BILL MAHER: Well, that’s the easiest thing in the world to say. Nobody disagrees. Nobody disagrees.

ANA KASPARIAN: There are people who disagree.

BILL MAHER: Actually raping babies. Yes, there are.

ANA KASPARIAN: There are people who, I’m wrong. Because Hamas, they’re freedom fighters. What kind of freedom are we talking about here?

BILL MAHER: The people see Hamas, the people who hate oppression so much are on the side of the people. And it’s not just Hamas. If you social justice warriors, if you have any other issue besides gender apartheid in the world that is above that, you’re just a joke. That if you hate oppression…

ANA KASPARIAN: I do.

BILL MAHER: Yeah. There is one issue which should be above all, because it affects more people. Hundreds of millions of women who have basically no freedom in the Muslim world.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. So we should slaughter them instead, which is what’s been happening.

BILL MAHER: Well, you should, you should prosecute a war to the end. That doesn’t, that does involve slaughter of every war.

ANA KASPARIAN: You know, I think, listen, civilians get killed in wars. I think everyone knows that. Everyone acknowledges that.

BILL MAHER: Especially when you hide. Especially when you hide behind them.

ANA KASPARIAN: But when 83%, according to the IDF’s own data, and this is reported, by the way, I consume Israeli media on this. I don’t consume American media on this. And Israeli media is super honest, way more honest than our media is. So when the IDF’s own data indicates that 83% of the people that they’ve…

BILL MAHER: Killed are civilians because they hide behind them.

ANA KASPARIAN: But, Bill, do you understand that by killing so many civilians, they are essentially multiplying extremism?

BILL MAHER: I do understand that. Do you understand that there’s very often in the world two very bad choices and you only have…

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I’m an American and I have to vote in presidential elections. Yes, I do know that.

BILL MAHER: You don’t have the good choice, you have the bad choice and the even worse choice. Israel has been being attacked by him. First of all, the entire Arab world rejected them for 75 years. They kept trying to make a deal. They kept saying, “No, we want it all.” That’s what “from the river to the sea” means. It means we want it all. We don’t want to compromise. They’ve never wanted a compromise. Israel gave Gaza back.

ANA KASPARIAN: But did…

BILL MAHER: They gave it back.

ANA KASPARIAN: But, Bill, in 2008, let’s say our country was occupied by Mexico, right? We have a bunch of people who are occupying our land, and then they decide, “You know what, we’re going to…”

BILL MAHER: And they weren’t occupied.

ANA KASPARIAN: Let me finish. Let’s say Mexico decides, “You know what, we’re going to leave, but we’re going to control their electricity, what goes in, what comes out.”

BILL MAHER: Because they were attacking.

ANA KASPARIAN: We’re going to mow the lawn and just randomly decide we’re going to slaughter people because they allegedly threw rocks. They have literally…

BILL MAHER: Well, they didn’t. Allegedly.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, Israel has nuclear weapons, Bill.

BILL MAHER: They have nuclear weapons and they don’t…

ANA KASPARIAN: And they have the world military superpower backing them, right?

BILL MAHER: Well, they have nuclear weapons. Which they don’t use. If Hamas…

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no, they don’t use it to pretend…

BILL MAHER: If Hamas had a nuclear weapon, how many seconds would it take before they used it on Israel?

ANA KASPARIAN: I have no idea.

BILL MAHER: Three. Three is the answer. Three seconds.

ANA KASPARIAN: How do you know that, Bill? Come on.

BILL MAHER: Because it’s in their charter.

ANA KASPARIAN: If they use a nuclear weapon against Israel, I’m pretty sure the very land that Hamas cares about would be done for.

BILL MAHER: Okay, well, then they would be martyrs. And that would be a good thing because that’s their death cult view of the world. It’s a good thing when you die. That’s why they strap suicide vests sometimes on children. The fact that you can’t see the moral difference between these two sides always amazes me.

Israel-Palestine Debate Intensifies

ANA KASPARIAN: Among people, I actually don’t see the moral difference when you have, like, Bezalel Smotrich and Ben Gvir literally talking about exterminating the entire population of Gaza.

BILL MAHER: Okay. They’re not talking about extermination.

ANA KASPARIAN: They are. I mean, the statements are brazen, they’re upfront, they’re honest. This is what they actually want to do. I mean, the West Bank is another example. The West Bank had nothing to do with what happened on October 7th, but they’re annexing that land anyway. They’re raining terror on innocent people, innocent Palestinians. They’re driving them out of their homes.

Like, listen, I am willing to admit, because it’s the truth, that what Hamas did on October 7th was a f*ing atrocity. Killing innocent people.

BILL MAHER: Couldn’t admit that.

ANA KASPARIAN: But you have a difficult time at least acknowledging the atrocities that have been committed against innocent civilians in Gaza.

BILL MAHER: Well, it depends on what you call an atrocity. All wars are going to have atrocity.

ANA KASPARIAN: A double tap on a hospital.

BILL MAHER: All war.

ANA KASPARIAN: A double tap on a hospital. So when the first responders show up.

BILL MAHER: I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about. I vaguely remember the thing.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: Yeah. First of all, that’s an old terrorist trick. That’s what they do all the time.

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay, but are you at least going to acknowledge that the IDF doing that was wrong?

BILL MAHER: Yeah, I’m sure. They have committed what we would call war crimes. As every army does. In every war.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. Including our own.

BILL MAHER: Right. In every war, including the Civil War. I forget who it was who made the good point. Like, during the Civil War, a lot of people would say, especially in the South, that Sherman did not have to burn Atlanta quite as badly as he did. I mean, we were pretty brutal. But would you also then just say, well, we don’t know who the good guys were in that war?

No, I think it was the North. I think that they committed atrocity in Atlanta yet. That’s true. They burned when they shouldn’t. And they were very rough on the South. They were still the good guys. They were fighting against slavery as Israel is fighting to survive. And also, you know, they are the front line in the Western world.

Expansion and Colonization

ANA KASPARIAN: I totally disagree with you on this entirely. I think much of the problems we have in the Middle East is due to the enabling of this expansion. Look, it’s an expansionist policy. If Israel wasn’t trying to continue expanding in the Middle East, I don’t think they would be dealing with the enmity like the enemies that they’re dealing with.

BILL MAHER: They’ve never been asked. They’ve never been trying to expand.

ANA KASPARIAN: They’re trying to annex the West Bank right now and Lebanon, southern Lebanon and Syria, which they’ve succeeded in.

BILL MAHER: These are all places that they were attacked from when they became a country in 1947. They said, okay, we will accept half a loaf. They had as much right to that land as anybody. There was a continual presence there since a thousand B.C. when King David had a king.

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t care about that at all, okay?

BILL MAHER: But it’s relevant.

ANA KASPARIAN: You can’t.

BILL MAHER: It’s relevant to people.

ANA KASPARIAN: Wipe out innocent people because used to live there like centuries ago.

BILL MAHER: You’re calling them colonizers. They’re not colonizers.

ANA KASPARIAN: They’re expanding and they’re annexing land. That’s what colonizers do.

BILL MAHER: Again, they were willing to take half a loaf. Then they were attacked in 19. Excuse me.

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s way more complicated than that, but it’s okay.

BILL MAHER: Well, I don’t know if you know the history.

ANA KASPARIAN: I do really well.

BILL MAHER: Really?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Tell me the war.

ANA KASPARIAN: So, for instance, when were they.

BILL MAHER: When were they attacked?

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay, so in 1967, when.

BILL MAHER: That was the first time.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, that wasn’t the first time.

BILL MAHER: When was.

ANA KASPARIAN: But when you say that they have offered land to the Palestinians, land that belonged to them in the first place.

BILL MAHER: It didn’t belong solely to them.

ANA KASPARIAN: The whole point of this whole two-state solution was, okay, we’ll give you this territory if you promise not to militarize. Without a military, you don’t have a country. You don’t have a country without a military, you don’t have a country without borders. Right. Without a military, you can’t defend your borders. So if I were engaging in these negotiations with the Israelis, I would say, listen, I respect the territory that you’re offering. However, we need to militarize. We need to protect our borders. To me, that’s a big thing.

Gaza and Hamas

BILL MAHER: But that’s not what they ever used it for. Again, they gave Gaza back in 2005. They could have chosen.

ANA KASPARIAN: They didn’t give Gaza back in two. They left Gaza, but didn’t really leave Gaza. When they have complete control over the.

BILL MAHER: Territory because they kept being attacked, they extend. Just let me finish one second.

ANA KASPARIAN: Go ahead, go ahead.

BILL MAHER: They could have turned Gaza into a state that was much more like, I don’t know, Dubai or something. If they wanted to, they didn’t. Hamas took over right away. They never had elections after that. They’re a terrorist.

ANA KASPARIAN: You’re right about that. You’re right about the elections.

BILL MAHER: They’re a terrorist mafia. Their own population is terrorized by them. They don’t like them. All they did was import weapons from Iran, build tunnels and use it to prosecute this war against Israel. They never used it. So of course Israel is going to be defensive. Their issue was they were not defensive enough, which is why October 7th happened.

ANA KASPARIAN: So you’re making good points. I’m going to concede to some of them, not all of them, but I.

BILL MAHER: I don’t even know why you want to talk about this.

ANA KASPARIAN: I know, I know. I’ll ask you one more question.

BILL MAHER: It’s frustrating because my problem.

ANA KASPARIAN: My problem is, okay, even if I concede entirely to everything you’re saying, how about a little bit of ire directed toward Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s the guy who facilitated the funding and has totally admitted to facilitating the funding of Hamas? Why did he prop up Hamas? Because he wanted to essentially discredit the PLO. Okay.

BILL MAHER: I mean, there’s all kinds of what abouts. You can say, what about ism?

ANA KASPARIAN: The very man propped up Hamas now saying that he needs to fight them. I mean, and now he’s also funding Abu Shabaab. Why are you funding Abu Shabaab, who’s also, who has ties to ISIS?

BILL MAHER: These things are not wrong. It just looks like you’re looking for something to make a false equivalency.

ANA KASPARIAN: This is what I want.

BILL MAHER: Look, I get.

ANA KASPARIAN: I want Palestinians to live in their own territory. I want them to be able to govern themselves. I want Israelis to live in peace and safety.

BILL MAHER: Then stop attacking them.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, they’re not going to attack them as long as they’re doing what they’re.

BILL MAHER: Currently doing they’re doing in retaliation for being attacked. Of course it is. They’ve been attacked. They were encircled. Lebanon. Why are they in Lebanon? Because Hezbollah was attacking from there.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. In response to what they’re doing in Gaza. Yes.

BILL MAHER: Well, before that. They’ve had four wars there.

ANA KASPARIAN: Was it when they were trying to annex land from southern Lebanon that they were attacking?

BILL MAHER: They were not trying to annex land. They were trying to put a border between the country that was continually attacking them. If they were, if we were being attacked from Canada, I imagine we would want a little border between Maine and Canada.

ANA KASPARIAN: True. I don’t think you’re building that border. We wouldn’t.

BILL MAHER: I don’t know where we’re getting this information.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, it’s not TikTok. Very well read on this. Very well read on this. I care about this issue a lot. I see. I do. Yeah.

The “Where Would You Live?” Question

BILL MAHER: Let me ask you one question, and then maybe we can get off it, because otherwise I just want to go. I want to go have dinner.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, yeah.

BILL MAHER: I’m not interested in this.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: It’s not really what I started a podcast for. You seem to be itching to get to it, and now that you have, I’m not going to back down on it because I don’t want to do it. And I’m not Jewish, by the way.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, I didn’t accuse you of being Jewish. And it wouldn’t matter if you were.

BILL MAHER: No, but I’m saying I do this because I think it’s the right thing and because I feel like I know the history and the politics of it.

ANA KASPARIAN: I respect your perspective. Yeah.

BILL MAHER: But if you had to live in the Middle East, so tomorrow, Ana, you got to go live in the Middle East, where would you live? You can pick one city, any city you can, you know, as far away as, say, Pakistan. You could live in Karachi. You could live in Cairo. You could live in Amman, Jordan. You seem to love Lebanon. I mean, Beirut’s nice when the bombing’s not happening and the assassinations have stopped. Or you could live in Syria. I hear that’s wonderful in the summer.

ANA KASPARIAN: Well, we now have Al Qaeda terrorists leading Syria.

BILL MAHER: Or the Houthis, I’m sure would make room for you. Tel Aviv or in the West Bank. Ramallah, I think, is wonderful for a little, in the fall, it gets lovely. Where would you live? What city would you live in? What do you think you’d be comfortable in that dress?

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m sure it would not be comfortable in this dress in any of the various Middle Eastern countries that have been destabilized by.

BILL MAHER: You’re not really blaming it on whitey.

ANA KASPARIAN: Listen, are you.

BILL MAHER: You’re blaming Islam on whitey.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m not blaming Islam on whitey.

BILL MAHER: What? You’re saying we destabilize? That’s why you can’t wear that.

ANA KASPARIAN: Did we not. Did we not.

BILL MAHER: Wait a second, wait a second.

ANA KASPARIAN: We were funding terrorist organizations in Syria during the Syrian civil war starting under the Obama administration. That’s why. Did that not destabilize Syria?

BILL MAHER: No. What’s destabilized?

ANA KASPARIAN: There’s a literal.

BILL MAHER: We’re talking about your dress.

ANA KASPARIAN: Why? It looks good. I know it looks good.

BILL MAHER: You’re saying you can’t wear that dress in Syria because of Whitey destabilizing?

ANA KASPARIAN: I didn’t say that.

BILL MAHER: Okay. That’s my mouth. Okay, great.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, it did destabilize very countries. Are you going to deny that?

BILL MAHER: I went. Asked about the dress and you went right to destabilize. So is that why you couldn’t wear that dress? Why couldn’t you wear that dress? Why couldn’t you?

ANA KASPARIAN: You want me to talk about why jihadism and it’s bomb. But why won’t you listen?

BILL MAHER: Why won’t you?

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I won’t.

BILL MAHER: Why?

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t believe in jihadism. Which is why I’m furious.

BILL MAHER: It’s not just that.

ANA KASPARIAN: The United States just had Al Qaeda.

BILL MAHER: Terrorism, the White House, jihadism, that is preventing you from wearing that dress there. Are you saying every Muslim is a jihad? I don’t think they are.

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay.

BILL MAHER: Why can’t you wear that dress?

ANA KASPARIAN: Let’s focus for a second.

BILL MAHER: No, you won’t. You won’t answer this question.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m not going to defend that religion. That extremist religion at all. Why can’t you just say this discussion is about? This discussion.

BILL MAHER: No, it’s very much what it’s about.

ANA KASPARIAN: Very innocent human beings that I don’t want to be slaughtered regardless of what their relationship is.

BILL MAHER: No one does. Then stop starting wars.

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s that simple.

BILL MAHER: Stop attacking Israel. It’ll stop. Okay, but the fact that you can’t answer that question, and you know that.

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t know what the question is. What’s the question?

BILL MAHER: You keep doing what’s my question.

ANA KASPARIAN: What’s your question?

BILL MAHER: Because you don’t really want to hear it.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, go ahead. I will give you space to speak. Go ahead.

BILL MAHER: Okay. The question is if you could live anywhere, right from North Africa all the way to. We left out Uzbekistan. You could live there. Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh.

ANA KASPARIAN: None. None of the above. None of them.

BILL MAHER: Or Tel Aviv.

ANA KASPARIAN: None of them. Literally none of them.

BILL MAHER: But if you had to choose one, you would so it to you.

ANA KASPARIAN: I would not to you.

BILL MAHER: Karachi, Pakistan, and Tel Aviv, same thing.

ANA KASPARIAN: I would figure something out. But I.

BILL MAHER: Powerful. Not as smart as I know you are. That’s. That’s. Come on.

ANA KASPARIAN: I have.

BILL MAHER: You’re going to get killed. You’re going to get killed for that. For good reason.

ANA KASPARIAN: No.

BILL MAHER: Yes, you are. And for good reason. Okay.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m Armenian. I’m Armenian. I have literal family members who currently live in Iran. I have no love for the Iranian regime. Let me be clear about that.

BILL MAHER: I left out Tehran. Would you like to live.

ANA KASPARIAN: Hold on, but let me just say something.

BILL MAHER: Tel Aviv.

ANA KASPARIAN: There is so much disinformation. Armenian Christians who are part of the Armenian diaspora as a result of the 1915 genocide against Armenia.

BILL MAHER: I know it.

ANA KASPARIAN: They’re living in Iran right now. They’re going to church. They’re being left alone by the ayatollah, as awful as the Ayatollah is. So look, I’m not saying I would want to live in Iran. I don’t want to live anywhere in the Middle East. I want to live here in the United States of America, the greatest freaking country in the world.

BILL MAHER: You’re like a politician. You’re avoiding Iran.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, I’m being super honest with my.

BILL MAHER: No, you’re not. No, you’re not.

ANA KASPARIAN: 100%, I’m being honest with you.

BILL MAHER: No, no, no. Because the question is, if you had to pick a city and you’re not answering that question, you’re doing what. You’re doing what politicians are doing and saying, I don’t want to live in any of them. I want to live in America. That’s not the question.

The question is, if you had to pick, would you rather live in Tel Aviv? Because I promise you, you wouldn’t last a week in the other places, and you could easily live in Tel Aviv. So if you don’t think that speaks of a difference between cultures and civilizations, then okay, we’ll leave it there. But I promise you it does. And if you had to actually do that, I think you would agree with me.

ANA KASPARIAN: I think given my very harsh and vociferous criticisms of the Israeli government, I probably wouldn’t feel so safe living in Tel Aviv right now under this government. Under this government.

BILL MAHER: First of all, they have free speech there, so it would not be an issue. But that is a side issue we’re not really talking about. We’ll just say just a person. Not you with your vociferous talking. Just a regular. A woman of your age.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m sure a woman of my age who grew up in the Western world would probably feel the most comfortable in Tel Aviv. I will concede that.

BILL MAHER: Wow.

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay. But we’re having a discussion about which culture we like, when in reality, I’m having a discussion about the value of human life and wanting innocent people to live.

BILL MAHER: Whether there is Raleigh, we’ve been here.

ANA KASPARIAN: Muslims in some other Muslim country.

BILL MAHER: You know what? When I’m bored, I know the audience is bored.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: So I’m going to cut it there because we’ve been around that mulberry bush before.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: So I don’t want to go around it again.

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay. You want to talk about husbands again?

BILL MAHER: Anything, any. Anything else? Because listen.

Finding Common Ground Through Disagreement

ANA KASPARIAN: I am able to sit with people I disagree with.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

ANA KASPARIAN: And it is what it is. We disagree on this issue. I don’t think that this issue alone is the makeup of who you are as a person. So I just want to be clear about that.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

ANA KASPARIAN: I think that we need to be able to have these kinds of discussions, as fiery as they are, because this is how we come to a solution or a conclusion. You need the tension. I think the tension is a good thing.

At some point, this country lost the ability to sit with that tension because that’s where we grow, that’s where we learn. Right. And so, you know, you’ve brought up some thought provoking things. I hope I’ve brought up some thought provoking points. I doubt that was the case.

BILL MAHER: But I will say this show, whatever the f* this is.

This happens. First of all, it’s ironic because I started this because, I mean, I have a show about politics. I don’t, you know, I have a job. This is like, let’s do something completely different where we don’t have to talk about politics. And, well, politics is everything. Well, especially with someone who’s political.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: But even people who are sometimes not. Because, I mean, again, I said if I’m going to do a podcast, it’s going to be completely different than real time. Real time. A lot of preparation. This.

ANA KASPARIAN: Zero.

BILL MAHER: I don’t know what the f* I’m doing here. I’m high and I’m having fun and I’m enjoying. So it does get like this. It got like this with Laura. Not to this degree with Laura, but it would always go back and forth. This one is the biggest challenge of to get back into a good mood.

ANA KASPARIAN: Can you do it?

BILL MAHER: You can do it.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: I’m having. The first time ever I’ve had a little. I’m having a little trouble.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, Bill, it’s okay.

BILL MAHER: It’s okay. It just. It’s just very frustrating.

The Left’s Language Wars

ANA KASPARIAN: Let’s talk about the transes again.

BILL MAHER: The what?

ANA KASPARIAN: That’s what the conservatives say, the transes. The left turned on me. The first thing that the left turned on me over was I just kind of got sick of the lingo that was kind of being pushed on us and the way that.

BILL MAHER: Lingo?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. I don’t have kids. I don’t want to have kids. And I don’t want to be called a birthing person. I find it super insulting. You know what I mean?

BILL MAHER: You never will be.

ANA KASPARIAN: And that doesn’t mean I hate trans people or I want to take rights away from trans. It just means this is my preference. So AOC used “birthing people” or “birthing person,” of course. And it was in the context of women’s reproductive rights being stripped away from them by the Supreme Court.

So I’m already pretty furious about what had just happened in the Supreme Court and the reversal of rights that we’ve had for decades. And then on top of that, you have AOC refer to women as birthing people because she wants to be inclusive.

And, yeah, I, you know, had a little bit of a moment where I was just like, please don’t call me on X Twitter at the time. Please don’t call me a birthing person. I’m a woman. I want to be called a woman.

BILL MAHER: So you fought with AOC on X. I mean, on Twitter.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I just. I didn’t even mention AOC. I was just making a point to the public. This is where I stand on this specific issue. Right. The terminology that’s being used to refer to women.

One of my friends who works for a different media organization put out five different videos condemning me about it. And I’m just like, is this really. This is worth destroying your friendship over? Really? This is insane.

And you know me. You know me well. We are friends. And you know that I’m not transphobic at all. I just think the feelings and the concerns and the worries of biological women matter, too. And I guess it doesn’t matter for at least some component of the left. I wouldn’t say the entirety of the left. Not even close.

BILL MAHER: But, I mean, the phrase I’ve always used. One of my big complaints about the left has been the one true opinion there is the one true opinion.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And when you deviate from that, that it’s so ironic. The people who absolutely hate bullies so much are the biggest f*ing bullies in the world, 100%. And they just want to bully you back into the corral.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. And you can’t do that with me.

BILL MAHER: You definitely can’t do it with me.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: But, I mean, they’ll love some of what you said there because, you know, the useful idiots, this is the thing that they love, and the people who are marching for the terrorists and stuff.

ANA KASPARIAN: But you want to go back there.

BILL MAHER: No, I don’t. I don’t want. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to live there. I want to live. I can live in Tel Aviv or anywhere else. They’re all the same. What does it matter? I just want to live. I do love America. Do you love America?

ANA KASPARIAN: I love America.

BILL MAHER: I do, too.

ANA KASPARIAN: I love America so much. And it makes me so angry that it’s not that our people aren’t being tended to. You know what I mean? And I’m not saying that in the context of oh, we want government to take care of all of us at all. No, no, I’m just talking about. I just feel like our country is being looted right now, and it makes me so furious.

The Cost of Living in Modern America

BILL MAHER: I feel like I was reading this really great article about—and I kind of got this, but he put the meat on the bones for it. To me, it started out just talking about how the idea of the poverty line was based—I didn’t realize this—like in the 50s or something, based on like three times what a family paid for food. So because you paid back then, about 33% went to food.

But we’re in a very different place now because we only really pay about 5%. Food is cheap, but rent, rents and stuff, mortgage, childcare—like, there’s all these other things. And he just broke it down. And of course, this is for families, people with kids and who need childcare. The two families that both people have to work and—but like really like a hundred—I think it was $140,000 just gets you to like—that’s insane.

ANA KASPARIAN: Like a—like just like getting by basically, a little better.

BILL MAHER: But yeah, but maybe not even like, you know, big vacation or just like—not in LA. Yeah, right.

ANA KASPARIAN: For sure.

BILL MAHER: It definitely depends on where you live. Right? But like the numbers that, you know, we used to think $150,000—I read that stat recently that like a lot of people make—wow, America is pretty rich. Not really. Right? Not really, because $150,000 with that kind of a nut is not rich at all.

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s true.

BILL MAHER: It’s okay. You’re not—

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s okay.

BILL MAHER: Actually, like, if you make really low money, you get a lot of government benefits, but then when you make this kind of money, you lose them all. So you wind up as close to the bone almost.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, you don’t even have to get to $150,000. I mean, the poverty line is considered so utterly low that people who are very obviously living in poverty—like, they’re not making enough income and should qualify for various, you know, programs to kind of get them on their feet—they don’t qualify for them. Right.

Taxes and Where the Money Goes

BILL MAHER: So explain to me the American economy, because I don’t—I never can quite get it why we—they take so much of my money.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right? Yes, yes.

BILL MAHER: It’s not like—yes, some couples taxes. Whenever I hear like, rich people don’t pay tax—what I—I can’t remember the last year when I didn’t give more than half. And I’m not even bitching about it if it went—

ANA KASPARIAN: Listen, there is now more than half.

BILL MAHER: That’s a lot more than half.

ANA KASPARIAN: There should be a moratorium on the discussion. And yet still poorly, whether we increase taxes or whatever. And look, I actually think that there are some examples of corporations in particular who get—like, they get taxed. Amazon should not be getting a tax refund.

BILL MAHER: Right?

ANA KASPARIAN: That’s ridiculous.

BILL MAHER: That’s the thing is that we’re like in the—just the rich people that aren’t really that rich who get hit hard. And when you make hundreds of billions, then you pay nothing.

ANA KASPARIAN: It’s insane. It’s insane.

BILL MAHER: Partly because you have an army of lawyers and partly because it’s in stock and things. And the tax code is, you know, Reagan tried to make it simple. It’s not simple. And they—and they game the system.

ANA KASPARIAN: That’s true.

BILL MAHER: But like, you know, just don’t tell me we don’t pay a lot of tax. How can you—and I’ve seen the stats. The government says, where’s the money going? Confiscate a lot of money. And I’d be okay with it. But yes, where is it going? Why is there still homeless? And why is there still, like, not railroads built in California? Why? Why? And it’s just like stupidity and f*ing bureaucrats and just everybody with their beak at the trough.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yep.

BILL MAHER: And just this, all this bullshit. And a lot of it does come from the left.

California’s Dysfunction

ANA KASPARIAN: Like, I mean, look, what’s happening in California, I think, is a really good example of what—graft, waste, all of that looks like. So, for instance, if you look at the state of California, people are paying their taxes. Okay? Our state taxes are super high. Municipal taxes, sales taxes, very high. It’s very expensive to live in California.

BILL MAHER: Very.

ANA KASPARIAN: And I—

BILL MAHER: State tax alone is 13%.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. It’s insane because of what we get in return, which is squalor. Homeless encampments. Okay. Story after story involving audits showing that various nonprofits have just stolen the money, have decided to take the money, pad their pockets.

BILL MAHER: It’s safetyism.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: Overregulation, red tape.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes. In California there is overregulation, especially as it pertains to real estate construction. We need to build more houses.

BILL MAHER: I said this to Gavin when last time he was on my show and like, “Oh, absolutely.” And you know, like, “Yes, I’m going to look into the red tape thing.” It’s just that is the one that I think is so hard to ever—it’s like they always say, “I’m going to Washington. We’re going to get rid of the waste and fraud.” They never do. No, everybody has their plan, DOGE, or whatever Al Gore had. And, and, and you know, “We’re going to—we’re going to—the lobbyists. We’re going to f*ing get rid of that.” And they never do.

It’s that smarmy, sleazy mud flow of consultants and people who just make their living not really making anything or doing anything or fixing anything.

ANA KASPARIAN: So true.

BILL MAHER: Just little—everyone has their little piece and it winds up the people. We pay a lot of taxes and it doesn’t quite get to the people or—

ANA KASPARIAN: No, it doesn’t. That’s the thing that drives me nuts in California. It’s not like we’re nickel and diming people. We have funded various programs to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. $24 billion in homeless funding.

BILL MAHER: Octomom alone. I mean, remember Octomom?

ANA KASPARIAN: I do remember Octomom. Is she in the news again?

BILL MAHER: I’m just saying. Yeah, she got a lot of—I don’t know what it would cost privately to birth eight children.

ANA KASPARIAN: You couldn’t pay me to do that. There’s no amount, apparently.

BILL MAHER: Apparently we couldn’t pay you to get one. Right.

ANA KASPARIAN: True, true.

Kids and Parenting

BILL MAHER: Yeah, I see. I totally understand that. But I’m a man, of course, I get it. And I never want to get the one thing that’s been steady in my life. When I was a kid, I didn’t like kids. And I still don’t like—I never really—

ANA KASPARIAN: I love kids. I just don’t—I don’t want to be responsible for any of that. Although that for sure, I don’t want—but, like, I don’t want to be responsible for any of them. And I—I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. I don’t know how parents avoid violence because, like—because when it comes to my family, when it comes to people I love, they don’t always—

That’s true, that’s true. But, like, I just think about—okay, I’ll tell you a story. Because this resonates with who I probably would be as a parent. When I was in fourth grade, I remember waiting for my mom to pick me up. I was at the corner of the school, and as she’s turning the street to pick me up, a group of boys from my class pass by me and one of them slaps my ass.

And my mom sees it. My mom sees it. I’m a fourth grader, so I’m like, what, eight, nine? Right? My mom’s crazy. So she like, literally stops her car in the middle of the intersection. In the middle, runs out with a rolling pin—because she did have a rolling pin in the car—and she just starts chasing them because she wants to beat the s* out of them.

BILL MAHER: A rolling pin.

ANA KASPARIAN: And that was the right thing to do.

BILL MAHER: What year is this? This was a rolling pin.

ANA KASPARIAN: This is in the 1990s, early 1990s.

BILL MAHER: Why in the car?

ANA KASPARIAN: She would threaten us with it if we were acting up.

BILL MAHER: Really? The old rolling pin.

ANA KASPARIAN: The rolling pin. When I was that age, obviously, I thought my mom was crazy, and I was, like, very, very embarrassed by it. But now as an adult—oh, I totally get it.

BILL MAHER: Like, did she catch the kid?

ANA KASPARIAN: I don’t—I think she, like, got one, like, swipe in, but nothing crazy, luckily, because she probably would have gotten in a lot of trouble. But—

BILL MAHER: But, Ana, if you were telling me this story and it came from the 1960s, I would say that’s how we did it. Parents could absolutely hit another kid’s—

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Another friend, parents, kids.

ANA KASPARIAN: It was great.

BILL MAHER: It was very much “it takes a village,” you know?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: But the 90s, I—I feel like—

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no, the 90s were so different, Bill.

BILL MAHER: I feel like the 90s were so great. They would call the cops. Already we were into the “call the cops” phase.

ANA KASPARIAN: There were no cell phones. There was no, like, “Oh, let me get my phone out.”

BILL MAHER: I know, but hitting another kid with a rolling pin, I feel like would—

ANA KASPARIAN: Not in this part of California.

BILL MAHER: Wow. Good for you. Well, it certainly isn’t that way now.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no, of course not. Are you kidding me? My mom would be in prison for the rest of her life, probably.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, exactly.

ANA KASPARIAN: She’d be—even in California for the—

BILL MAHER: Rest of her life. Yeah, exactly. No, they used to, you know, swat. You know, just—you could swat a kid, like, if—and—and your father could be looking at this, and it’d be like, “Thank you, Bill. I appreciate that. You know, he was getting out of line.”

ANA KASPARIAN: My mom, at, like, open houses—this is when I was in elementary school—I’ll never forget it. She would literally tell the teacher, “Listen, if my kids are acting up, I give you permission to spank them.” And I’m like, “Mom, don’t say that. Like, you’re not supposed to say that.”

But she was very much of the mindset, and this was an old school mindset that doesn’t exist anymore. If the teacher says that you’re misbehaving, you’re in the wrong. Whereas now I feel like if the teacher says the kid is misbehaving, the parent fights the teacher, which I think is a mistake.

The Breakdown of Authority

BILL MAHER: I’ve always said that there used to be an ironclad wall. You couldn’t break the chain—your parents and your teacher. And now the parents take the side of the kid.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, that’s where it all went.

BILL MAHER: Oh, it’s a total mistake. Yeah, but I mean, you seem like you’re from such a traditional family. They must have been a lot of pressure to have a kid. I mean, it sounds like you’re from—you know what I call villagers? People who have, like—what?

ANA KASPARIAN: Don’t say that to my dad. Okay.

BILL MAHER: Well, people—

ANA KASPARIAN: Because in Armenian culture, calling someone a villager is like—

BILL MAHER: I don’t mean it as an insult.

ANA KASPARIAN: The villagers, you know, I don’t mean it that way.

BILL MAHER: I use it in terms sometimes with women. Like, women who, like—and I don’t mean this as a bad way, but, like, there are women who, like, they mate for life, you know?

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I’ll mate for life, but not to have kids.

Parenting and Personal Choices

BILL MAHER: Right. But I mean, like, and that’s what I—yes, I call them villagers. Like, most modern women, like, no, they’ll f our men a little before they. But some women are like, no, we only do it if we are, like, fing super serious. And that’s great. I mean, not for me, but I mean, in general. Yeah, it’s great if that’s your thing. But I call them villagers because it’s like, not that they literally live in a village, but, you know, it’s just the villagement. And that’s not an insult. Just, you’re villagers and I am not. I’m a city boy.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yep.

BILL MAHER: You know, I know what you mean.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, totally.

BILL MAHER: But you must get a lot of that kind of pressure. Or maybe they’ve stopped. Maybe they gave up.

ANA KASPARIAN: Well, what happened with me was I remember being in high school or college and I went out to sushi with my mom and my aunt, and I got my mom warmed to the idea that I’m not going to have kids very early on. So I just remember having—

BILL MAHER: I love the way you put that.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: You got warm to the idea you—

ANA KASPARIAN: Have to, like, ease them into the notion that your daughter is not going to give you grandchildren. And that’s okay, because when you’re sick and when you’re battling cancer, your daughter is going to be by your bedside, as I’ve been throughout the past year. You know what I mean? And so I just—I don’t know. You just know you’re a man. But I know that you probably went through the same thought process I did when, you know, you know, I’m not really fit to be a parent. I don’t want it. And to be a parent, you need to want it.

BILL MAHER: That’s so true.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right.

BILL MAHER: You have to be willing to basically trade your life for theirs.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: Not completely.

ANA KASPARIAN: And I don’t want to do that. No, it is completely. It is completely. I have to say. Well, you know what?

BILL MAHER: It’s completely. Because the parents of the modern era f*ed it up and made it completely. My parents did not. I don’t know where I was yakking about this recently, but I saw this person on TV, a woman. It was TMZ. I can say it. And she was talking about—they got into some discussion about kids. And she said, “I wish I could have one hour a week, you know.”

ANA KASPARIAN: Like, I can’t live like that.

BILL MAHER: It’s just like, like everything. Every day, I never have a minute to myself. I’m packing lunches and I’m doing this and I’m picking them up. And I just thought you guys did it to yourselves. My parents did not feel these kind of obligations to be around me all the time.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And they—and we were both happier for it. You did it to yourselves. And you do have to trade your life for your child. Yes, if you’re a decent person and if you’re going to bring a child into the world, but not to the degree the parents of today do it. And they didn’t make it better for him. They ruined two lives. Congratulations. There’s a f*ing hat trick for you and society.

ANA KASPARIAN: I agree. I mean, my most fond memories of growing up is when I’d be outside riding my bike and playing with my neighborhood friends for hours on end. You know, at some point, you know, my mom would demand that I come home, but for the most part, you know, when I was out playing with my friend, she just kind of let me do my thing.

Now, I will admit, like, we kind of—even though I grew up in Reseda, California, at the time, it was like a little bit of a suburban feel, you know, and it felt safe even though it was the 90s when crime was supposed to be much higher.

BILL MAHER: But it is the suburbs, isn’t it?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. Reseda, California.

BILL MAHER: Sure.

ANA KASPARIAN: It was just, you know, working class community. It wasn’t like—when you think of suburbs, you think of like, beautiful, like, no polished, you know, landscape and everything. We didn’t have that.

BILL MAHER: You just had a lawn.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, yeah, a lawn. We had a front yard.

Suburban Neighborhoods and Housing

BILL MAHER: I mean, I went back to my house recently, like two years ago at that Thanksgiving, probably two years ago this week, and I wanted to see the house I grew up in and the neighbors who were still living there when I was a kid.

ANA KASPARIAN: Wow.

BILL MAHER: Oh, yeah, yeah. Who never been next door neighbors. Oh. And their son is one of my best friends still, you know, from like, from like 8 years old. So I said, can, you know, can you ask the neighbors if I could see the house I grew up in? And it was completely unrecognizable. Yeah, they had—just because it was very small.

But the neighbor’s house, which was the same model, really, when my parents bought the house. This is World War II generation people. On the GI Bill after the war, in the 1950s, you didn’t even see the house. You saw a model. They built these neighborhoods and it’s like, oh, yeah, you got 24B. It’s looked like every other house.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes, yes. That’s—yeah, that’s the neighborhood I grew up in. Track homes built in the 1950s.

BILL MAHER: Right.

ANA KASPARIAN: You know, each one was like a tiny bit different. Right. Like so each other house, like one looked the same as the next one. Not the next one, but the one over. Right. Like, like—so there was a little bit of variation, but not much. But the point is, why can’t we do that now?

BILL MAHER: Do what?

ANA KASPARIAN: Like, we desperately need more housing.

BILL MAHER: Right.

ANA KASPARIAN: So why the f* are we trying to reinvent—reinvent the wheel? Why can’t we do the same thing we did in the 1950s? We mass produced housing.

BILL MAHER: You know what Levittown was.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes, of course.

BILL MAHER: I mean, that was the first suburb that it was like, again, they—no variation in those houses. So just like they just mass produced a suburb.

ANA KASPARIAN: Let’s do that again.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, we could.

ANA KASPARIAN: Why aren’t we?

California’s Homelessness Crisis

BILL MAHER: We—because we can’t even get the homeless. We—the homeless houses cost like—no, they keep like a million dollars a piece.

ANA KASPARIAN: I know. I’m working on a piece up right now, an investigative piece on Project Home Key. And it is—so Project Home Key is the policy in the state of California to—it’s like the housing first policy. Right. Like we need to take every homeless person and put them in a hotel room that we have converted into an apartment. Which, fine, I respect that idea if it’s done efficiently and properly, but that’s not what’s going on.

BILL MAHER: Hotels. Who came up with that? Because the Roosevelt Hotel in New York that was used for—

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I think the idea was we have a bunch of these motels and hotels that are like dilapidated. What if we buy them and just like convert them to apartment—build apartment units. Which sounds like it makes a lot of sense, except in practice, it’s actually been a bit of a disaster.

BILL MAHER: Well, they weren’t building apartments. They just put them in the hotels. I know how I acted on the road in hotels all my life. It’s just a bad idea. Hotels do not foster good behavior. They just don’t.

ANA KASPARIAN: Well, it also just inherently, like the policy inherently minimizes the complexity of the issue in California and I’m sure other states as well. I’m sorry, but if you take someone who is addicted to fentanyl off the street and you just park them in an apartment unit and pretend, as Karen Bass has pretended, we’re going to offer them wraparound services, but they really don’t. They’re going to overdose in the apartment. And that’s what’s been happening.

I’m sorry, but the homelessness issue isn’t as simple as, okay, we’ll give them a home. No homeless people. They fall into different categories. There are the homeless people who are not on the streets. Right. We need to make a distinction between street homelessness and the people who are couch surfing or staying with family. The single mother with children who left her abusive husband, but she’s staying with friends. It makes sense to help her out by putting her in one of these units.

BILL MAHER: No, it doesn’t.

ANA KASPARIAN: You don’t think so?

BILL MAHER: No. I could tell you how to solve this, but there’s probably laws or bureaucrats or whatever. Here’s what you do. First of all, citizens own the streets. You can’t be on the street. You can’t control this sidewalk. I am a citizen. I pay taxes. The sidewalk is mine, not yours. Sorry. No tents.

We put you in a barracks. A nice barracks, but a barracks. I’m sorry. You are where you are in life. We are going to help you. We are not going to judge you. But that’s where you are. You have to be in a barracks. Now, they always—

ANA KASPARIAN: What do you mean by a barracks? Like, I just want to understand.

BILL MAHER: A barracks is a—is a big room with a lot of beds and a shelter.

ANA KASPARIAN: You mean a shelter?

BILL MAHER: A barracks, whatever. But they say, well, they don’t want to go there because they don’t the crime. Okay, pennies on the dollar. Hire a security guard for every row of beds and have them so you’re safe there. We guarantee you safe there while you’re there.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: We also have an adjacent barracks where there’s counseling and there’s drug addiction. People get off drugs and there’s food, and it’s like, do that. When we think you’re ready to go back into society, then we’ll have people who are trying to repatriate you back into society do that. But putting them in hotels or pretending that being on the street is just a lifestyle, which is where they—

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no, I’m not buying that.

BILL MAHER: I know, but that’s where they went with that. Again, another example of thinking you’re helping and you’re actually stupid. You’re hurting the marginalized people you’re supposed to help.

ANA KASPARIAN: Okay, let me just be clear about one thing. That obviously it struck a nerve with you and it struck a nerve with me as well. I don’t give a f* about your lifestyle choices at all. I really don’t.

BILL MAHER: Good. I thought it was something good.

ANA KASPARIAN: You are not entitled to overtaking a public park.

BILL MAHER: No.

ANA KASPARIAN: Because you want to live on—right. And I know people, by the way. I was part of the group of people in this country who didn’t think that even existed. Who the hell would want to live on the streets? That doesn’t exist.

BILL MAHER: Right?

ANA KASPARIAN: No, it does. It exists. Unfortunately. It does.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

ANA KASPARIAN: Cuckoo.

BILL MAHER: Most of them are mentally—something mentally is off.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. I don’t think that comes even close to representing, like, half the homeless population in California. It does not. Yeah.

BILL MAHER: A lot of people are like one paycheck away.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right. I agree.

BILL MAHER: You know, you go from—well, you go from, I’ll have the rent next week, I promise to—sorry. That’s the third time you lied about it. And now you’re in your car.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, totally.

BILL MAHER: And then after your car comes the sidewalk and those people can be helped. Yes. And that’s what I’m trying to say.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: Get you someplace warm.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes.

BILL MAHER: Where there’s soup. Okay. And security. It’s not that hard to do whatever f*ing stupid laws are in the way of it. It—if only a politician could come along and just cut that Gordian knot. Because it’s not that hard to do. And it doesn’t cost a million dollars per unit.

Drug Courts and Criminal Justice

ANA KASPARIAN: So one of the policies that California actually got right. And we’ve moved away from it, unfortunately, is drug courts. So the way drug courts worked in California was if you committed a crime, not just simply having possession of drugs or using drugs publicly, but if you committed a crime because of your drug addiction.

BILL MAHER: Right.

Drug Courts and Rehabilitation

ANA KASPARIAN: The judge would give you an option. Okay, well, you robbed someone in their own home in order to feed your drug addiction. You have one of two options. You can either go to prison or rehabilitation. We could put you in rehab and you can get clean. You make your decision now, and a lot of people, understandably so, and this was the smart decision, would opt for rehab.

Drug courts used to work. I mean, they worked in California. Why did we move away from them?

BILL MAHER: And I just had drug court.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, we had drug courts. Yeah, yeah, I did a lot of—

BILL MAHER: Just about drugs.

ANA KASPARIAN: Just about drugs. Because, listen, I don’t agree with throwing people just willy nilly throwing people with addiction in prison. That’s not the right solution. But when you give someone who’s in the throes of addiction the option, either you can go to prison or you can get clean, they’re going to go for getting clean.

BILL MAHER: I think I could do a show called Drug Court.

ANA KASPARIAN: I like it.

BILL MAHER: I like it a lot. I think I have the credibility, I have the drugs.

ANA KASPARIAN: I love that you’re smoking a joint.

BILL MAHER: While I have a drug court. I have the drugs right here. And I know a lot about the subject and I think I’d be a very fair justice meeting out, you know, because, look, I’ve never been somebody who thinks that drugs are all good. I don’t believe my hippie friends who want to tell me that this is health food. It’s not.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, it’s not.

BILL MAHER: Yeah, it’s not, but it’s not. It’s more benign than the other drug I’m doing, which is beer, by the way.

ANA KASPARIAN: I love pot.

BILL MAHER: Oh, really? Why did you say so?

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I wanted to kind of get a feel for you before I partook. Decided to partake.

BILL MAHER: I think we, I think we’ve gotten both ends of it, baby. Yes, we did.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BILL MAHER: I think we got, I think we hit the gamut tonight.

ANA KASPARIAN: We did, we did.

Finding Common Ground

BILL MAHER: And thank God we did. It is almost impossible to leave here not with good cheer. I just, you know, even, that was the, that was the highest we ever went up, I feel, to the almost into the Bezos area where you’re actually technically in outer space and came down. But we still did it. We still did it.

ANA KASPARIAN: We did it.

BILL MAHER: We f*ing did it.

ANA KASPARIAN: But I’m capable of it, and I knew you were. You would be capable of it too, because you’re an adult and you’re able to, let’s, let’s joust a little bit. It’s okay. We can joust and we can come back from it. You think you have to joust? Don’t you want to joust?

BILL MAHER: You think you’re the first Jew hater I talked to? I joke, I joke, I joke, I joke. See, I’ve joked. That’s what happens out of you with comedians with the joking and then we’re coming back and we’re drinking and we’re laughing and we’re funny. So.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: What do you do for fun when you’re not my husband? Wow.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah. Look, I’m telling you, man.

BILL MAHER: Like that, huh? Wow. And how long you been together?

ANA KASPARIAN: We’ve been, see, we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary.

BILL MAHER: How long were you married?

Meeting Her Husband

ANA KASPARIAN: So before that, first of all, I met him at a club and—

BILL MAHER: Nothing wrong with that.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, there’s nothing. I mean, people are meeting each other online, so meeting him at a club, I find that super romantic. I met him in person. That’s incredible.

BILL MAHER: Bigger hoes than you out there, trust me.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh my God, by the way, I mean, I thought, oh, I’m not going to marry this guy. He’s just a hot guy I met at the club. So I’m going to, because I’ve always been a good girl. I’ve always been in one super long monogamous relationship to another.

BILL MAHER: You’re a villager. I knew.

ANA KASPARIAN: I’m a little bit of a villager, I guess. But don’t tell my dad. Don’t tell my dad.

BILL MAHER: No shame in being a villager there. Shame in not. They would say. That’s what the villagers. No shame in being a villager.

ANA KASPARIAN: So. But he. What can I mean.

BILL MAHER: And it’s good for the guy. He doesn’t want to feel like his girl’s, you know, dirty draws all over town.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, definitely. He definitely, you know.

BILL MAHER: Right.

ANA KASPARIAN: He told me after the fact, he’s like, yeah, I just knew you were a good girl. Which even though I was doing my best to make him think I was a naughty girl, you know. But no, he knew. He knew.

I’m not going to say anything that I wouldn’t want my parents to know about.

BILL MAHER: Take that as a non denial denial.

ANA KASPARIAN: Exactly. Okay. But what was meant to be, ooh, this is me being bad. Of course I end up marrying him. Of course.

Relationships and Attraction

BILL MAHER: I always felt, and this is sort of the pattern of my life, when the sex happened right away, it made everything easier and better. It’s like if we’re attracted, the rest is sort of bullshit and then you’re starting the thing on a lot. Every serious girlfriend I had, they never put me through the agony of guessing which date it was going to happen on.

ANA KASPARIAN: Right, right, right.

BILL MAHER: And I always so appreciated that, that it just, it’s, you know, it just, it carried through the relationship.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, that’s a really good point.

BILL MAHER: It wasn’t like, oh, I think girls, some girls think, oh, once he’s f*ed me, then he’ll have had me and leave. I guess if that was the only thing about you that was interesting, I might do that.

ANA KASPARIAN: I thought sex was super boring. I mean, if it was great, it was a good time.

BILL MAHER: He’s going to come back for more. It’s like, no, I’m like a raccoon who just tipped over the garbage. I’m coming back for more. This was awesome in here tonight. I’m coming back to this house.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yep. Yep. I mean, he loved it so much, he wanted to do crossword puzzles with me after the fact and didn’t want to leave, you know.

Crossword Puzzles and Complementary Knowledge

BILL MAHER: How funny, if I was allegedly seeing somebody, I mean, we allegedly would be doing crossword puzzles together because, and this is someone who did not have a good education because nobody does of her age. They just stopped educating people. But the crossword puzzle is something, and it’s amazing. I was never able to do the New York Times Friday or Saturday.

ANA KASPARIAN: Those are tough.

BILL MAHER: They get harder as the week ends.

ANA KASPARIAN: They do. They sure do. Yeah.

BILL MAHER: And I still can’t. But when we do them together, we do it in 20 minutes because I know what happened with the Ottoman Empire, and she knows Scooby Doo.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, my God.

BILL MAHER: No, it’s true. It’s like complementary knowledge.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, I love it.

BILL MAHER: It’s a beautiful thing. Yeah.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: It’s a beautiful thing.

ANA KASPARIAN: I didn’t know that you were into the post coital crossword puzzles. Me and my husband are.

BILL MAHER: Oh, I didn’t say they were post coital.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, okay.

BILL MAHER: But, I mean, they could be.

ANA KASPARIAN: But are they pro coital? Does it turn you on?

BILL MAHER: Well, I mean, kind of. Are we always having to be coital? I mean, who can live under that pressure? I mean, coital, I love coital, but not every moment is coital, you know?

ANA KASPARIAN: Fair enough.

BILL MAHER: Fair enough. So you got to give it a rest.

ANA KASPARIAN: I want to get my cardio in.

BILL MAHER: Honey, my d*’s tired. Get the puzzle.

ANA KASPARIAN: Oh, my gosh.

Wrapping Up

BILL MAHER: All right. Well, I guess we got back to laughing. Look at that.

ANA KASPARIAN: I told you we were capable of it.

BILL MAHER: We’re totally capable of it. I’m so glad you came here to yell at me and laugh with me.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yes. Thank you for having me.

BILL MAHER: I would do it over in a minute.

ANA KASPARIAN: Same.

BILL MAHER: And I’m glad. Mostly, I think we are on the same page with so much stuff that matters. About talking to each other and not cutting off and accepting the differences.

ANA KASPARIAN: I love my country and I love the people within it.

BILL MAHER: Yes.

ANA KASPARIAN: And that means loving everyone, regardless of where they stand on politics. Once you see human beings as human beings and you don’t boil them down to a political identity, you live a life that’s far more enriched and you actually show that you do love your country. Loving your country means loving the people within. You know what I mean?

BILL MAHER: I do know exactly what you mean.

ANA KASPARIAN: I mean, I’ve had whiskey, so I’m starting to get a little bit, you know, lovey dovey and whatever.

BILL MAHER: Very glad I got to know you. Your star is only rising. And I think that’s good for the country because you’re smart and you listen and you have, you know, a great voice and, yeah. So I think our trails will pass again and that.

ANA KASPARIAN: Thank you, Bill.

BILL MAHER: All right.

ANA KASPARIAN: Maybe next time we toke up together.

BILL MAHER: Yeah. And next time you’ll feel comfortable doing that, right?

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah, for sure.

BILL MAHER: All right.

ANA KASPARIAN: Yeah.

BILL MAHER: Having a baby, that’s still up?

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no, that’s off. Off the table.

Population and Resources

BILL MAHER: Good for you. We don’t want any more babies.

ANA KASPARIAN: No, no, no.

BILL MAHER: I never understand that whole Elon Musk thing. And he’s not the only. But is that a good thing?

ANA KASPARIAN: To have a bunch of kids from different women.

BILL MAHER: But what happened to the population? Too big. We only have so many resources. They just, among the things that they can just pretend. Like the thing we were saying about AI taking all the jobs and more people with only so many resources on Earth. We just pretend that that’s not a thing anymore.

ANA KASPARIAN: Club Random.

Yeah, I guess the narrative changed entirely.

BILL MAHER: We’re doing our part.

ANA KASPARIAN: Club Random.

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