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

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

All right, here we are in overtime with the founder and CEO of Axios and co-author of Simplified, Jim VandeHei. He's a rock star, his new album is called Halfway to Jesus, Kid Rock, and he's the Republican senator from Texas and author of Going Further, Senator Ted Cruz. First one is for you, Senator. Do you think Talarico will win Texas? Simple question.

God, I hope not. I don't know. Look, look, right now we are early vote, Democrats are showing up more in early vote than Republicans. So if the election were over today, the answer would be yes. Now, from my perspective, the good news is there are a lot of Republicans still out there that can show up on Election Day, but it's going to come down to turnout. If those Republicans don't show up, not only could Talarico win, you could see Democrats win every statewide race in Texas.

But your guy in Texas running there, what do you think of him? He seems to be sort of a malfeasant fuck. Am I wrong?

Look, I'm not going to convince you to love Ken Paxton.

No, you're not.

But you've got to admit, Talarico, I think, is a very weird dude.

Why?

Because he is like the ultimate woke social justice warrior. This is a guy who stands in front of a church and.

Thinks Jesus has multiple genders.

Yeah. He says God is non-binary. He says there are six genders. He stands in front of a church and says he weeps for his whiteness and weeps for his masculinity. That's just weird.

That is weird. I couldn't agree with you more.

Maybe he's just gay.

What?

Maybe he's just gay. That'd be easier to say, but instead he doesn't say that.

But why are we inferring because he thinks Jesus is non-binary, which I don't think he means as.

I know what he meant.

What do you think he meant?

He's trying to go into this whole, what's a woman? Like, it's like.

No, I just think.

I'm like, are we really talking about this 250 years later?

No, I just think he, look, I don't know that much about it, but I have heard those quotes. I think what he meant by the Jesus is non-binary thing is that, you know, there are a lot of people who believe in God. I mean, your whole album is about Jesus, but in a more sort of like ethereal way, more spiritual way. Like it's not as, you know, he's not the man in the sky with the beard, you know, that kind of thing.

So Bill, all of these, he's on video. He was asked, who do you really love? And his answer is trans children.

Well.

I don't know anyone else who would answer that question that way. And it's, you know.

Is that the full answer you're giving?

Yes. I promise you, you can pull up the video. He was asked, who do you really love? And he pauses and thinks and says, I really love trans children. This is a guy who has voted repeatedly.

I mean.

Like that's, and part of it is he's of a younger generation where he came of age during COVID lockdowns, during all of this woke radical stuff.

No, he didn't come of age during COVID lockdowns. He's 40.

Politically, no, he's like 35.

Okay.

Politically, he was a state legislator.

Five years ago.

Okay.

Come of age means, see, he wasn't 14.

Well, he still looks like he's 14. He also says on video that his objective is to, quote, dismantle capitalism.

Yeah, that's, look, I am not for any of that shit.

I know.

You're right. I just think your guy is even worse. All right. What are your, Bob, what are your thoughts on Democrats saying they'll impeach Pete Hegseth? Oh, yeah. Hakeem Jeffries says we're going to run him out of town. I know your friends.

For what?

I know your friends with him.

Very much.

If they retake the majority in Congress.

For what?

Well, I assume.

He must say this is what we're going to impeach him on because he did this, this, and this. What?

Well, he has fired people in the Pentagon.

He got woke out of the military.

Some of those people were the farthest thing from woke.

I don't know.

We talked about it at the White House the other day.

I remember.

Yes. I forget the guy's name, Chris Donohue maybe. Maybe I'm getting the wrong. But this guy was exactly who you would want in the Pentagon. So I don't know what they got rid of him for. And he was very high up. He was like head of the entire Middle East Command or something. He's done a lot of that. He also seems to have used up all the missiles.

You think they're going to tell us how many missiles? Maybe the senator knows, but I don't even think he's going to tell us. I think we have enough missiles. I love Pete Hegseth.

I think the case against Hegseth that is a fair one, and the senator should weigh in, is there's a lot of really, really, really highly competent people who are serving in the military at the highest level who he ran out of town. And at a moment where we're at war, and it's not like we have a surplus of super talented people ready to fill in that void. And I think the reason that a lot of Republican senators privately dislike the man profoundly, the senator probably won't say it, but I can't think of a single Republican senator I talked to who does not profoundly dislike him.

No, I like Pete Hegseth. I'll say that definitely.

And you think he's been an awesome defense secretary?

Look, I think.

You like the way he's prosecuted the Iran? Seriously, I'm not.

Yeah, but look.

He's done a good job of the Iran.

I think one of the most important things he did was try to get the Defense Department back to a war-fighting culture. You look at the enlistment rates that are skyrocketing. I think young men and women are eager to come serve this country again. And he's someone that was on the front lines fighting. And you look at as he goes out and works out with servicemen and women, I'll tell you, they love him and believe in him. And will the House impeach him? They probably will, but it has very little to do with him. It has everything to do with the Iran war.

That's what I think. Maybe the rank and file of them. I seem to remember him talking to a room full of generals. Do you remember that?

Yeah.

I remember the looks on their faces when he was going through his SNL impression of himself. And the looks on the faces of the general was, who the fuck is this guy? And why is he talking to us like this about beards and weight and all this shit? They were not happy.

How many of those generals actually serve? How many of those generals actually serve like Hegseth?

Probably almost all of them.

No, not a lot of them as you would think.

Really?

They're graduates of these big schools this that and the other. Yes, a lot of them are. I've done a lot of these tours for a lot of these long wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, all over the world.

So he did a fly-by-over your house.

He's right. The troops absolutely love him.

He did a fly-by-over your house.

He did not do a fly-by-over my house.

What was that?

Two Apache helicopters did a fly-by-over my house.

Okay, right. Now.

And it was fucking awesome.

Okay. Fine. Like, you know me. You heard me the other night. I don't give a shit about any of this, the ballroom, the pool, all the stuff that doesn't really matter. This doesn't really matter. But just tell me, look me in the eye and tell me, if Obama was president and he did that over Jay-Z's house, you guys would.

Jay-Z would say that was fucking awesome.

Yeah, that's clearly right. Your heads would explode.

I don't know that I would particularly care where a couple of Apache helicopters flew.

Really?

Yeah, really. Like, I remember ever talking about it.

I don't know how much it means to these guys and girls that do this work to have something, a little something like that, a little out of the norm, something, you know, that combines shoulder, respect, have a little fun.

There's too many big things for me.

I would have no problem with that at all.

Okay, all right.

Invite me there for the next one.

Go by Jay-Z's house next time.

Yeah. Ted, what's your reaction to Flavio Bolsonaro, oh, fleeing to Miami? Oh, boy. This I find disturbing. I don't know that much about the Brazilian election. I know his father ran. His father tried to do a Trump and they put him in jail for it. And I remember doing a whole thing here about I admire Brazil for doing the right thing there. But this is his son. He lost the election. He thought he was going to win.

Yep.

And then the next day he's on a plane to Miami. I don't want to see, what I'm saying is, I don't want to see this come here. I don't want to see a guy loses an election and he has to get out of the country because he's going to be arrested. Now, maybe this guy deserves to be arrested, but I don't know. This is dangerous stuff that I see possibly coming here.

Yeah, look, Lula, who's the current president, is a communist who hates America. And by the way, I'm not putting words in his mouth. That's what he says. He ran as a communist who hates America. Bolsonaro, what did Lula do when he came in? He locked up his predecessor. You say, well, that's great because he did something wrong. I think he just threw his predecessor in jail because that's what Latin American dictators do. I understand why the son got out of town because with Lula coming back, I think he had every reason to think he'd come lock him in jail. And I will say one of the fascinating data points, beginning of the Trump administration, they cut 83% of the funding to USAID.

Yeah, I didn't know he was a communist. Mamdani is a communist.

Yes.

I agree.

I mean, I read the quotes on the air. You can't say things like, we want to take over key industries. We want to take over the means of production without being, that's what communism is. I don't know about this Lulu guy. You're sure about that? Yeah. He's quite open about it.

Okay. All right. A suspected Jim, a suspected Chinese spy reportedly got close to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. How concerned should we be about China's efforts to infiltrate America's biggest technology companies?

Super concerned. I mean, you go back to, I do think artificial intelligence is going to be 100 times more powerful than anything we've ever had our hands on. The Chinese are in a fierce competition to beat us to it. We're happening to beat them right now. It's widely known that there's a ton of espionage going on, particularly in Silicon Valley, where they've planted folks from China into these companies to try to steal their secrets so they can get better equipment than we do. That's why I don't understand at different times where we start to play footsie with the Chinese and start to give in to them in areas where we have real dominance, like around chips, when you know that they want to eat our lunch militarily, diplomatically, financially, internationally.

And Ukraine.

That's why Hegseth just now, he's putting all the bases off the grid electricity wise. So if this happens and they shut down power grids, all our military bases can still function. Every word Jim just said is exactly right. And it is, China is fighting a thousand-year war with us. They're fighting with technology. They are funding propaganda online. They're twisting our kids. They're pushing garbage at our kids. They're ripping apart our country. You know, China is funding, on university campuses, they were funding the anti-Semitic protests.

They're working too hard. We can fuck ourselves that way.

That's true.

I don't think we need any help in dividing ourselves, but all right, one more. Bob, you've gotten to know Trump personally over the years. What's something about him that people would be surprised to learn? Oh, you want to tell the Macron story?

The what?

The Macron, the golf cart story?

Oh, yeah, that was funny. Yeah, we're all golfing. And I hate speaking out of school, but this is just a fun one. And I mean, the guy's taking calls all day. He's working while you're golfing. The guy does not stop working.

That's true.

I think we can all agree on that. He works, he sleeps like me four or five hours a night, right? So we're out there, Macron calls, and he's like, blah, blah, blah. He's talking. I'm kind of standing there.

You're on the golf cart, right?

I'm standing next to his golf cart. He's like, hey, I'm here with the great Kid Rock. Like, Macron knows who I am. And he's like, Bob, say hello. So he gives me the phone. I'm like, hello, Mr. President. And I'm like, I'm from the Paris of the Midwest, Detroit. And Trump leaves.

He gets in the golf cart.

He leaves. I'm like.

I love that. He leaves Macron on the phone with Kid Rock.

What else you been up to?

All right. Thank you very much, you guys. I appreciate it.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10:00, or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.COM.