A New Breed of Politician — Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

[0:00] And finally, new rule, let's get real about Graham Plattner. [0:04] If you've been sleeping on politics lately, well, who can blame you? [0:09] But the big story is the Democrats can likely take back the Senate in November if they win Maine. [0:15] But their local candidate official now up there is after the primary this week. [0:20] Let's just say a guy who has a backstory that screams, don't ask. [0:25] Now, I don't judge Graham Plattner because I'm just learning who he is. [0:31] Problem is, so is he. [0:35] What I do know is he served his country in the Marines in war, and you can never discount how big that is. [0:42] But then there's the sexting while married, scary behavior, so say some of his exes, [0:50] old posts about how he's a communist, and all cops are bastards, and black people don't tip. [0:56] Well, they don't tip cops. I can understand that. [1:00] Here's a typical Plattner quote he said about the Iraq war. [1:11] You can think it's dumb and also kind of not want to miss it. [1:16] Oh, Graham, I feel the same way about so many things. The Oscars, Christmas, Taylor Swift's wedding, [1:25] that little speech Nicole Kidman gives before the movie comes on where she looks insane. [1:31] And then, of course, there's the Nazi tattoo on his chest. [1:41] I mean, seriously, this guy's whole life is the movie The Hangover. [1:47] He doesn't need a term in the Senate. [1:55] He needs a gap year in Costa Rica. [2:00] And yet, I would still urge the folks in Maine to vote for him for two reasons. [2:05] One, we need to restore balance in our government, and a Democratic Senate would help a lot with that. [2:11] And two, get used to it. [2:14] America is a country filled with a lot of broken, horribly educated, phone-addicted, sort of nutty people. [2:21] And as long as we live in a representative democracy, we are always electing our reflection in the mirror. [2:27] I wish the tattoo was the scariest thing about Plattner. It's not. [2:31] That would be his solution to a home invasion, which is to rape the home invader. [2:36] And no, of course, that's not policy he's proposing. [2:40] It's a fantasy his ex says he talked about. [2:43] Next week, it'll be policy. [2:46] And to be fair, he said the raping wasn't something he'd do in a gay way, because that would be weird. [2:59] Okay, this is the kind of thing war does to people. [3:05] That's who we created. [3:07] Our society is not healthy. [3:09] We create broken people, so don't expect politicians to suddenly become Lincoln-esque again. [3:15] Tom Keene Jr. is running in New Jersey, despite the fact that he's gone completely missing for the last three months. [3:22] No biggie. [3:23] He says in the future, he'll be completely transparent. [3:26] Tom, completely transparent is what you are now. [3:39] Are you okay, Tom? [3:40] Are you curled up in a ball? [3:43] And he's favored to win, because I'm just guessing a lot of people say, [3:46] Hey, we've all been there. [3:49] Oh, there's going to be more bad tweets from candidates that haven't aged well. [3:53] More bad tattoos. [3:55] Did Plattner know the tattoo was a Nazi symbol when he got it? [3:58] Maybe. [3:59] But people today are so inundated with misinformation and internet bullshit, I wouldn't trust he knew what it stood for anyway. [4:06] Everything people know now is from social media and shitposting and whatever some other idiot sends them. [4:14] Or whatever the Chinese are feeding them on TikTok. [4:17] Every single violent actor in the last five years from Trump's assassin to Luigi has prompted a headline that said some version of experts find markers of both right and left wing political views. [4:31] Yeah, because we have a new breed of voter today. [4:34] People who are intensely political, but somehow know almost nothing about politics. [4:39] Liberal, conservative, they don't know what makes you either one. [4:51] Conspiracy theories, that they know. [4:53] And memes, and trolling that also might be true. [4:57] Maureen Galindo is a Democrat who ran for the House in Texas this year. [5:05] Describes herself as a judgment-free sex therapist. [5:09] I hope so. [5:10] Who wants a judgy one? [5:11] What would that be? [5:20] Well, plainly, your dick's too small. [5:22] Okay, so she's judgment-free. [5:29] Namaste. [5:30] But she's also said during the campaign she wants to turn the ICE detention center in her district into a prison for Zionists and ICE officers. [5:42] But, she says, putting Zionist billionaires in prison does not mean putting all Jews in internment camps. [5:49] So a moderate. [5:54] I guess she thinks she's progressive? [5:56] Because hating ICE, okay, check. [5:58] And hating Jews, sure, that's progressive now. [6:01] But concentration camps? [6:03] I associate that more with conservatives. [6:05] Is that just me? [6:06] Crazy. [6:09] It's just not a deal-breaker anymore for running or serving. [6:13] The Secretary of Health keeps a freezer full of roadkill. [6:18] Even the worm in his brain is like, I'm not eating that. [6:22] I mean, our current president just speaks out loud his internal monologue. [6:36] You know what the internal monologue is, right? [6:40] It's just that stream of thoughts that we all have pouring through our heads all the time. [6:47] And that we all edit. [6:50] We edit our thoughts. [6:55] We don't just fling all of our feces. [6:58] We have a straight of Hormuz between our brain and our mouth where we don't let everything through. [7:04] But not the President of the United States. [7:07] You're either crooked or you're stupid. [7:09] I am the chosen one. [7:11] Who knows better about surprise than Japan? [7:13] You're just a lightweight. [7:14] You're a terrible person. [7:16] I don't like mosquitoes! [7:17] He's a war hero because he was captured. [7:19] I like people that weren't captured. [7:20] Quiet! [7:21] I know you're not thinking. [7:22] You never do. [7:23] Hey, I'm president! [7:24] Can you believe it? [7:26] I mean, look, politics has always been a crazy game, but the people running weren't this crazy. [7:39] My winner, though, this year, Victor Marks. [7:43] Yeah, I just heard of him recently. [7:46] Victor's a Christian minister who may soon be governor of Colorado and who performs exorcisms over the phone. [7:52] Which I think gives the devil an unfair edge. [7:57] I do. [7:59] The power of Christ can bow. [8:07] Shit, I'm in a tunnel. [8:08] Victor Marks says things out loud that he just seems to have hallucinated, the way AI does sometimes when it tells you that the key ingredient in fettuccine is glue. [8:25] Victor says he rescued 45,000 people from predators, which is about 45,000 more than anyone can verify. [8:33] He says he called in an air strike that killed 70 ISIS fighters, which is impressive considering at the time he was not in the military. [8:42] He says he was forced to kill a man when he was seven. [8:46] And when a reporter asked, do you think you've killed people as an adult? [8:50] His answer was, does it matter? [8:52] I think it does.